


The Thorns of a Locust Tree

by cwilliams1794



Series: Trembling Giant [2]
Category: Dear Evan Hansen - Pasek & Paul/Levenson
Genre: Borderline Personality Disorder, High School, Implied/Referenced Drug Use, Implied/Referenced Suicide, Jewish Holidays, M/M, Mental Health Issues, Mild Language, Social Anxiety, Trees
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-06-10
Updated: 2018-07-27
Packaged: 2019-05-20 08:33:17
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 9
Words: 36,544
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/14891162
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/cwilliams1794/pseuds/cwilliams1794
Summary: Evan and Connor are free to resume their friendship after Connor returns home from a psychiatric facility. But Connor's relationship with his family is more frayed than ever, Evan and Connor are still outcasts at school, and Connor's own mental health is a work in progress. When Jared proposes a new business venture, it could open new opportunities - and dangers - for all of them.





	1. Letters from the Psych Ward

Dear Evan Hansen,

Your tree pictures arrived today - thanks. What's the big one called?

Yes, I'm still doing okay. Though that might just be the Ativan talking. They keep you on a constant, two-beers level of chill here.

I'm really glad you're still writing me.

Since you asked, here's a little more about the other inmates. There's a girl here who's severely anorexic. Think she weighs like eighty pounds - which is great for me, since she gives me her tater tots. There's another girl who spends most of her time talking to a wall. Wall's quite the raconteur, judging by their conversations. There's another kid, Isaac, who's 15 - first day I was here, he called our coloring project bullshit and refused to do it, so I liked him immediately. It's a little disturbing how often he talks about killing people, though.

There are other kids in here, but those are the most coherent ones.

Mentioned I'm supposed to write down two things I'm grateful for every day, so here are today's two:

  1. Last time I was on Paxil, it was like wearing a chastity belt. (You're on Zoloft, you know what I mean.) Turns out, no ill effects in that department this time.
  2. It was sunny today? I dunno, I got nothing.



Tell me more about what you've been up to. School stuff. Life stuff. Tree stuff. Anything.

Sincerely,  
CM

P.S. So Pete's back with his mouth wired shut? That's hilarious. Guess he can't talk shit when he can't even eat solid food.

 

Dear Evan,

Okay, I walked into that one. But that tree is not a George. This is a tree that leads other trees into battle. It's probably called Chester Beauregard Harrington III or something.

I take it back. It's not hilarious that Pete's jaw is broken. I promise I won't make fun of him. I am very sorry.*

Enforced boredom means lots of time to talk to my fellow inmates. I think we’re all used to acting semi-normal in public, so once you’re in a place like this you feel like you can let it all hang out. It’s weird as hell, because the other patients’ll start with some nonsense about whatever we had for breakfast, and next thing you know you’re talking about every trauma they’ve ever gone through. And these kids have seen some serious shit. (Someone asked what happened to me, and I wanted to say my whole family was murdered by a roving pack of clowns, but I had to say, “Nothing really, my brain just broke.”) But I’m kind of over it now. Sometimes I want to say, “Look, I’m sorry your dad raped you when you were five, but can we just talk about movies or something?”

So stop putting yourself down. I like hearing about your "normal" days. Your letters aren't boring. ~~They're the most exciting thing that~~ Changed my mind, they're not the most exciting thing, She-Who-Talks-to-Walls just bit the head nurse. Took three orderlies to take her down.

But your letters are the most exciting things that don't result in everyone getting sedated.

Today's two:

  1. Got my phone privileges revoked because they figured out Walking Dead was giving me her food. Now a nurse watches her eat. So now I have a handy excuse to not talk to my parents. (And I guess I'm glad Walking Dead's eating too.)
  2. Isaac was downright chipper today. We had a whole conversation where he didn't mention murder once.



Sincerely,  
CM

*I am not actually sorry, but my therapist says acknowledging the necessity of social forms is a requirement of healthy interpersonal relationships. Fake it till you make it!

 

Dear Evan,

DO NOT TALK TO PETE.

I don’t care how sorry you are for him. That guy’s a piece of shit. The only reason I’d talk to him would be if I was really desperate for weed – so you, as a Good Kid™, should just leave him the fuck alone.

Seriously. Don’t apologize, don’t talk to him, don’t even look at him. Act like he’s not even there.

Anyway – I have good news. I'm coming home in a few days. Not only that - I'm going back to school too.

That was a compromise. I thought I could quit school and just get a GED, but my parents vetoed that. Therapist suggested homeschooling, and my mom was all for it, but since the goal is for me to not kill myself I voted that down. So the only other option is going back.

Looks like I have to make it through this year if it kills me.

I'm on a brand-new chemical cocktail, and once I'm out I'll need to start DBT and family counseling. Or at least counseling for me, my mom, and sometimes my dad when he has time off work (i.e., when my mom can guilt him into it). Zoe flat out refused to come.

Think the staff’s glad I’m leaving. I got a stern talking-to from a counselor today because they found out I started a dead pool for the ward. I’m giving Isaac eighty-twenty, since he seems better. I gave Walking Dead thirty-seventy, because she is one determined bitch. Nurses still haven’t figured out she purges after every meal.

I’m giving myself fifty-fifty.

Today's two:

  1. We can talk in person soon. I told my parents what happened in the band closet (not _everything_ ). They don't believe me, but they'll pretend they do if you keep talking to me. A strong support network prevents suicidal ideation, you know.
  2. I’ll have a bedroom door that closes. Holy shit, what a luxury.



Sincerely,  
CM

P.S. Congratulations on getting the cast removed!

I was looking forward to your other hand being free.


	2. Chapter 2

“You seem happier,” Dr. Sherman said. She underlined something in her notepad.

It was the last day of September, and the tree outside her office window was just starting to change color. Last month it had been bright green; next month it would be orange and gold. Classic sugar maple. Evan liked to think about it, when he didn’t want to think about therapy.

Evan looked away from the tree, to his therapist, and then to the floor. He still didn’t like making eye contact. “Yeah – yeah. I think so.”

Dr. Sherman waited a moment. She’d told Evan at his first session that she wasn’t afraid of awkward pauses. He could take as long as he needed to gather himself. But when no elaboration came, she asked, “Your mom says you’ve been staying at home less? Attending school events?” 

“Oh, yeah. I, um, went to a pep rally earlier this month.”

“Did you go by yourself?

“I went with…” _A kid from my English class_ , he nearly said, until his mind flashed forward through a complete conversation.

_So you’ve made a friend!_

_We haven’t really hung out, the last two weeks._

_Why not?_

_He was in a psych ward._

_Why was he in a psych ward?_

_Because he’s violent, steals things, does drugs, and keeps trying to kill himself. Probably. I mean he does other things too, but those are probably the main reasons._

_…Is he still in a psych ward?_

_No! He’s coming back soon! I’m really looking forward to it!_

That would make him sound – crazy. He didn’t want to sound crazy to Dr. Sherman. He wanted to seem like he was getting better. He wanted, somehow, to tell her the good things about Connor, divorced from all the bad things: his intelligence, sense of humor, love for books and art and music, and the simple fact that he hadn’t pushed Evan away yet. _I know he sounds bad, but he’s good for me. Really_.   

But this was impossible. None of the things he wanted to share would override the impression that Evan was one step away from getting abused. So instead, after a lengthy pause, he said, “…I went with my whole class. A lot of people were there. I wasn’t really alone.”

Dr. Sherman tapped her pen against her notepad. “I see. You know, Evan, one of the goals you set in our last session was to relate to your classmates better. Have you tried striking up a conversation?”

“…Yes.”   

She seemed to note the hesitation. “It won’t always be easy or pleasant. Just stick with it, even when things are rough. I know you think others only ‘put up’ with you, but you’re putting up with them as well. Everyone has problems. Theirs might be even bigger than yours.” She smiled.

“I know,” Evan said.  

***

Evan's mom was waiting for him in the parking lot when he finished his appointment. She asked how it went. He said fine. She asked how his schoolwork was going. It was also fine. Then she said they could maybe have dinner at KoKo Chicken at the mall.

KoKo was a Korean fried chicken place Evan happened to like. They hadn’t been there in months, so he was excited about that - for a second. But going out for dinner was a treat. And his mom didn't do treats, unless...

"What else are we doing at the mall?" he asked.

She switched on her turn signal and looked both ways before answering, like she was stalling. "I'm thinking it's time you had a suit," she said.

Evan shrunk down in his seat. "I don't need a suit."

"Senior portrait day is coming up, right? Don't you want to look nice for the yearbook?"

"I'm not buying a yearbook-"

"And you need it for graduation, and job interviews, and maybe college interviews too."

Evan muttered, "I don't think I can get into a four-year right away."

"Hey, what happened to not giving up before we try?" his mom asked. She probably meant to be encouraging, but it sounded more like a threat.

"Aren't suits expensive? Can we really afford it now?"

"You let me worry about that," she said - or warned.

Evan hated clothes shopping. He hated talking to salespeople, and trying on outfits, and checking the fitting room mirror to judge if he looked better or worse. He didn't know how to be fashionable, or even put-together, and it felt like vanity to try - like being thrown into the water without knowing how to swim. He hated having to look at himself at all. 

After Evan's dad had left, Evan and his mom had done a lot of shopping in thrift stores. He remembered hours sifting through donations at Goodwill. The lingering smell of old laundry. The creaky racks and handwritten price tags. They were better off now, but the sting of it had never left Evan either. He felt guilty for growing, for needing new clothes, for wearing things out and forcing his mother to sacrifice and save. He felt guilty, at times, for existing. Clothes shopping reminded him of all of that.

Not to mention suits might need tailoring - which might mean being measured - which would mean a stranger touching him - and at that Evan wanted to shrink into a speck. He started breathing deeply.

His mother noticed.

"Hey," she said. "It'll be fast. Just in, out, and then we're going out for dinner."

"Okay."

"And don't say 'Fine' to the first thing you try on just so you can get out of there faster."

"...Okay."

"And don't go looking for the cheapest thing. Even if what you want is a little more expensive, I'm getting it for you."

Evan thought,  _Even the things I do to make her happy just make her sad_. 

He kept his head down when they arrived at the mall, following behind his mom like a defeated dog on a leash. He watched asphalt turn to sidewalk turn to faux marble – only looking up when she stopped by a J. Crew window display. 

"See, I'm imagining something like this - you would look good in light gray, don't you think?"

Evan thought the mannequin looked way more successful than he would ever be. While his mom debated colors to herself, he glanced around the mall. Shoes squeaked against polished tile. Piped-in pop music spilled over from the H&M, as sugary sweet as the smell of the Cinnabon next door. He saw families, couples. A teenage girl shopping at Sephora. It might’ve been – Zoe?

His first impulse was to hide, but that was unnecessary. She had her back to him. She was looking closely at the shelves of nail polish, slowly picking up bottles and putting them back, until finally - with a sudden, decisive movement - she grabbed one off the top shelf and headed to the cashier.

"Evan?"

Evan's attention snapped back to his mother. She smiled slyly at him.

"Someone you know?"

"Just - a girl from school."

"Then you should say hi to her!"

"No!" Evan said. He immediately felt his face flush. The only thing worse than being measured for a suit was making awkward conversation with his former crush.

"Why not? You know, one of your therapy goals was talking to your classmates more-"

Evan was ready to curse his past self out for setting that goal. He didn't want to explain who Zoe was, or that he’d asked her out and been rejected, or – most of all – the whole situation with Connor.

Evan’s mom didn’t know about the letters. He always made sure to check the mail before she got home. He had given her a greatly abridged account of his friendship with Connor, leaving out the suicide attempts, and the theft, and the trespassing, and...most things, really. He had a feeling she wouldn't approve if she knew everything.

He blurted out, "I just don't want to, okay?"

She looked taken aback for a moment. Evan almost never raised his voice.

"Okay. Sheesh. No one's forcing you," she said, then muttered, "I wonder if those appointments are even helping?"

The question was more to herself than Evan, but he felt it like sandpaper against his skin all the same. He followed her silently to Macy's. New clothes. A dinner he didn't deserve. Pills and therapy sessions that all brought them to the limits of her flexible spending account. All of this, and in return, he couldn’t even say hi to a classmate like she wanted.

 _I just fail. All the time_ , he thought as they started walking again to the Macy’s. He wished more than ever that he could somehow disappear. 

***

Evan didn’t hear from Connor over the weekend. That didn’t stop him from thinking – obsessing, actually – over what Connor was doing at any moment. How did it feel to be back home? Was it tense? Was it normal? Were the Murphys glad to have him back – or did he suspect they were happier when he was gone?

Evan wanted to know, but he didn’t want to ask.

That Monday, Evan paid less and less attention in class the closer they got to lunch. By the time he got to history he couldn’t tell the Townshend Act from the Tea Act. Anticipation weighed so heavy inside of him that it almost felt like dread. Even in this short space, Evan had gotten used to writing Connor - planning what to say, what pictures to include, checking the mail as soon as he got home. Letters were safe. He never stumbled over his words on paper. He didn't have to worry about posture or breathing or sweat. He almost preferred them.

And yet…they were only a substitute for what he wanted. Contact. Companionship. He couldn’t get that from a screen or a piece of paper – at least not in the same way. He wanted Connor _here_.

The bell rang.

Evan was the first out of his history class when the lunch bell rang. He checked his phone the moment he was in the hallway, even though he'd already memorized the text Connor had sent him that morning. 

 _Meet me outside the physics lab. Room E315_. 

Students were streaming out of the laboratory. Evan looked for Connor in the crowd, heart beating hard. 

He didn't see him.

The last student hurried out of the lab. A kickdown door stop held the door open. Evan stood by it for a few seconds, thinking maybe Connor was just late, until he heard Mrs. Schoenfeld's grating voice.

"You're going to fail this class."

Evan peeked into the classroom. He saw Mrs. Schoenfeld, the physics instructor: a woman in her sixties who kept the room warm, always wore turtlenecks and thick sweaters, and still complained about the cold. Evan had been in her class last year, and survived by largely staying out of her way. Maybe she had been a good teacher twenty years ago. Now it was clear she was only counting the days until retirement. 

And standing in by her desk...

Long hair. Black clothes. A sharp, pale face. 

Evan breathed in, just as Connor said, "Really? I thought we couldn't use physics to tell the future."

"No one wants your smart aleck remarks," Mrs. Schoenfeld said. "You've missed two quizzes, four labs, two weeks' worth of homework, and all the assignments you've submitted so far have been abysmal."

"My absences were excused-"

"As a senior, it's your responsibility to put an academic plan in place before you take extended time off."

"Oh, you're right! I should've planned my health crises in advance! My  _sincere_  apologies."

"Watch it, Murphy," Mrs. Schoenfeld said. Her voice was very cold. "You're on track to fail the exam next week. And I've never seen a student with your record manage to turn it around."

"Cool. So if you've already decided I'm going to fail, I can just cut your class for the rest of the year, right? Since it doesn't make a difference whether I'm here or not." Connor slung his backpack over his shoulder and turned away from her.

"Excuse me!" Mrs. Schoenfeld said sharply. "Did I say you could leave?"

"Nope!" Connor said, and walked out the door. 

Evan hadn't been able to see Connor's expression during the conversation. He expected irritation or contempt. Instead, for that single second before he spotted Evan at the door, Connor looked - worried. 

But his features relaxed once he saw Evan. Instead of worried, he looked relieved. And tired. Deeply, immeasurably tired. 

"Hi," Evan said. 

"Hi, Evan." 

Evan wasn't sure if he was supposed to hug him or shake his hand. ( _What do friends normally do?_ ) He wanted to say that he'd missed him. He'd thought about him every day. It'd hurt to turn around in fifth period and see an empty chair where Connor was supposed to sit.

Instead, he said, "You were - kind of a jerk to Mrs. Schoenfeld just now."

That wasn’t at all what he meant to say. Connor raised an eyebrow. "Good to see you, too." 

He started walking down the hall. Evan followed. 

Evan usually wasn’t noticed when he walked around the school building. Hardly anyone looked at or said hi to him. Sometimes his classmates walked into him, like he was invisible. For Connor – it was different. People noticed Connor, and they avoided him. As they went down the corridor Evan saw students glance at Connor, and avert their eyes, and make way for him without speaking.      

“That’s not – I meant to say–”

“Let me guess,” Connor said. “‘It was all in your head.’ ‘You just need to relax.’ ‘Today’s a new day!’ Or this was my favorite, ‘You’re not gonna shoot up the school, are you?’ I’ve heard it all today.”

“I was going to say I missed you,” Evan said.

Connor looked at him. They were at the double doors that led outside. “Well. No one’s said that so far.”

He pressed on the door’s push bar with his elbow, and Evan squinted in the sudden sunlight.   

They left the school building. Immediately Evan heard cars leaving the parking lot, chatter from the picnic tables, the _thump_ of a basketball in the outdoor court – kids playing a pick-up game during lunch – and, if he concentrated, an American flag high above them flapping in the breeze.   

“Where do you want to go?” Connor asked.

Even felt inexplicably nervous about having to make a decision. “If you brought your lunch, I know where we can sit, if you want..." 

Connor let him lead. "She's right,” he said as they walked. “I'm going to fail physics. I get the concepts, but not the math, and physics is nothing but math problems."

"You took calculus last year. How was it?"

"It raped me."

"...Oh."

"Just bent me over and went to town. There was no love," Connor said.

Evan led the way to the track field. This was his preferred place to go during lunch. A row of young trees grew past the field, next to a fence that separated the school from the street. Hardly anyone came out here during lunch. In the past Evan could be sure he'd be alone here...away from anyone who'd think he was weird for spending countless lunches alone.

They settled on the ground, backs against a tree, and talked about nothing while they ate. (Evan was happy to share Connor’s string cheese, but declined his wasabi-flavored kale chips.) It was only after all the nothing was out of the way that Evan felt they could go into Connor’s absence. He swallowed and looked away while he asked, "Did the psych ward...help?"

Connor stretched against the tree. "Don't know."

"It sounded like it helped some people. Like...you said that one kid, Isaac, seemed better in your last letter."

"Isaac killed himself the night I wrote that." Connor took out a kale chip and snapped it - methodically, in half, then quarters and eighths. "Somehow smuggled a razor in. Slit his wrists in his room. Staff walk by every fifteen minutes, but by then he’d already bled out. That's why he was happier near the end. He'd finally decided to do it." Connor clamped the pieces to his mouth and tossed them back, like pills, before he leaned back and shut his eyes. "That guy totally screwed me on the dead pool."

Evan watched him. It felt safer to look at him when Connor’s eyes were closed. Connor was prone to dark circles under his eyes – making him look like he hadn’t slept in three days – and Evan wanted, weirdly, to touch that delicate skin with his thumb, as if he could smear the bruised color over Connor’s cheeks.

He reached out and took Connor’s hand instead. Connor accepted this. He shifted slightly to interlace their fingers. He didn't open his eyes. 

"Here's how I feel, honestly. I feel like I just survived a shipwreck. And just when I was about to drown, I grabbed onto a plank of wood or something. So fine, I'm floating. But I'm not saved. I just didn't die. I still have to build a boat out of all these broken pieces and get to land, somehow, but I don't know where that is or how I'll get there. Sometimes I think I can do the whole Castaway thing. Sometimes I think it'd be so much easier to just let go and sink." 

He waited a moment. Evan could hear birds chirping in the tree above them, and far away, the rumbling of cars returning to the parking lot. Lunch would end soon.

"I didn't know Isaac," Connor said, "but I understand him. He didn't really kill himself. Depression killed him. His illness killed him. It almost killed me, too."

Evan suddenly had no idea what to do.

He wanted to kiss Connor. But in all their letters they had never actually discussed - this. What they were supposed to be. They were holding hands, which Evan guessed was a good sign, but he didn't know how to ask for more. Should he literally ask? Would that be lame? Should he just go for it? What if he misread everything? 

 _Maybe I'll just sit here and hope he's braver than me_ , Evan thought.

As he was waiting, the bell rang again. This far away from the main building, the bell was faint and easy to miss, but Evan knew Connor heard it. He squeezed Evan's hand briefly before opening his eyes. 

“Maybe – maybe I could help you with physics,” Evan said suddenly. “I took it last year. I was okay at it."

"You're offering to tutor me?"

"I mean...it can't hurt, if you want to pass..."  _It'll be a reason to spend time with you_. "Not tonight, though," he clarified. "I'm going over to Jared's for Rosh Hashanah."

Connor looked at him, surprised. "Are you Jewish?"

"No - but it's more like a family thing, like a mini-Thanksgiving kind of? My mom and his mom are best friends, basically, so they invite us over every year..."

"You know there's a ton of things I don't know about you?" Connor asked. "What's your favorite color?"

"Blue."

Connor glanced at Evan's blue shirt, blue backpack, and blue shoelaces, and said, "I probably should've gathered that."

Together, they walked to their English classroom. 

A few students were waiting in the hall for their teacher, Ms. Giordano, to come and unlock the door. Evan noticed their chatter quieted down as he and Connor approached - and right after, could feel Connor bristle next to him in preemptive defense, like a rise in static electricity.

Evan hoped no one would speak to Connor directly. 

His wish wasn’t granted. "Hey Connor," a classmate, Silvia, piped up. “Is it true that you were in an insane asylum all this time?"

Evan grabbed Connor's forearm - trying to keep a firm, steady pressure without holding him too tightly. "You're okay," he said softly. "You're fine."

Evan could feel the tightness in Connor's arm, and then, finally, the release as Connor unclenched his fist. Connor looked away from Silvia. "That's none of your goddamn business, now, is it?"

The weariness was gone, and in its place that mask of apathy and churlishness went up. Was this what the whole day had been like for him?

When their teacher arrived, Connor stalked in front of Evan into the classroom, everything about him hard and untouchable again. He only sat a desk or two behind Evan, but to Evan he could have been a world away - floating alone in the ocean, miles away from anyone.


	3. Chapter 3

Rosh Hashanah at the Kleinmans'. Evan had already lived through nine of these, and somehow it still wasn't easy.

The first one had been the hardest. He and Jared were both seven, and their parents had expected them to become instant friends, but Evan had just lost his dad in the divorce and Jared was losing his dad in a different way, so neither of them had been in a friend-making mood. Jared had been nice, mostly - he'd asked Evan to play with his dinosaur figures - but seven-year-old Evan...and eight-year-old Evan...and nine-year-old Evan...had been too terrified to leave his mother's side for very long, and seven-year-old Jared had taken his shyness for standoffishness. Evan remembered being watched like pandas in a zoo, the only children then - so much pressure to get along. It was weird how first impressions never really wore off.

Now it followed the same routine. Hugs and hellos at the door. Hand over a bottle of wine. Answer questions at dinner. Try to make eye contact. Try not to mumble. And afterwards - find someplace to hide until his mom was ready to go. 

This year's hiding place was the rec room, where Jared's younger siblings and cousins were playing Mario Kart. Evan squeezed in with the schoolkids and settled on the couch like an awkward, silent boulder. 

He knew Jared would find him eventually. He had to. This was the inevitable end of these family dinners: Jared couldn't talk about health insurance with the adults, and he couldn't join the under-twelves in Mario Kart, so eventually he had to talk to Evan. He didn't have a choice. Evan always felt like he had to apologize for this - that just by the accident of their ages, they'd been forced into an unavoidable, unwanted camaraderie. 

And he was right. He saw Jared wander over to the drinks table for a gratuitous second helping of soda, then idle by the wall as if the game interested him - like a tourist at an aquarium exhibit, only mildly, briefly engaged - and then, finally, settle where he'd meant to go all along: on the couch beside Evan. There was nowhere else for him to go.

"Happy New Year?" Evan said.

"Shana tovah, Evan Hansen." Jared raised his plastic cup like he was making a toast, and like a toast, suddenly drained it.

"...Your dad looks good," Evan lied.

Actually Jared's dad looked pale and out of breath. Jared shrugged. "Stairs are hard on him. The second I can afford it, I'm buying them a new house."

“I thought you were sending your parents to Switzerland,” Evan said dryly. Jared liked to make lots of grandiose promises about what he was going to do after he made his first million, like pay off his parents’ debt, and send his siblings to college, and get his dad the latest and greatest experimental treatments off in Europe somewhere.

“Sure. They can have a regular house and a vacation house. Why not?” He suddenly put his cup on the floor and rubbed his hands together. "I have a business proposal for you."

This was different. "What?"

"So," Jared said, "I used to volunteer at the temple a lot - you know, for the service hours. Did a lot of odd jobs. Installed new security cameras. Taught a bunch of old people how to email. One of the other volunteers was this guy called Marty. Really nice guy, must’ve been eighty years old, came every day for minyan. We used to shoot the breeze over doughnuts. Anyway – I found out last week that Marty died, and his son-in-law got in touch with  _me_. Turns out Marty had a storage unit, and the family wants nothing to do with it. They just want it cleaned out so they can end the lease. The guy told me if I clean it up, I can keep whatever I find in there."

"What do you think you'll find?"

"Who knows!" Jared said. "Could be anything. Might be a bunch of old-timey porn. Or maybe Marty was a secret millionaire. I've watched Storage Wars. So I just need hands to help me move stuff. Want in? I'll split whatever we find...sixty-forty."

Evan wasn't even interested in haggling with Jared. His only thought was that sifting through someone's abandoned belongings sounded like a job for one specific person. 

"I'll do it," Evan said, "if you ask Connor along."

" _What?_ " Jared said. "He’s _back_?"

Evan remembered that Jared hadn't seen Connor at school yet - a lot of the Jewish kids had stayed home for the holiday. "Today was his first day."

"Where was he all this time? I seriously thought he finally offed himself."

"That's not funny," Evan said, but Jared pressed on. 

"No really, where was he? Juvie? Rehab? An insane asylum?"

Evan flinched. "It wasn't an insane asylum. It was a psychiatric facility. We wrote letters while he was gone."

“You’re still talking to him? After what he did?”

“What do you mean, ‘what he did’? He didn’t do anything to me.”

Jared looked totally flabbergasted. “Do you have the memory of a goldfish?” he asked. “In the two weeks when you apparently fell for him, he wrecked his car, stole from his doctor, _broke a guy’s jaw_ , and tried to kill himself. _Twice_. And the only reason he hasn’t done even more crazy – crap–” – Jared censored himself with a glance at his younger relatives – “–is that he was locked in a _mental hospital_ for the last few weeks. That was why he was in, right?” he asked pointedly. “The suicide attempts? Or did he do something else I don’t even know about?”     

Evan was starting to regret confiding in Jared. "Hospitals aren't prison, Jared. You don't go in because you  _did_  something. He was sick and needed help. So he got it, and now he's back. Can he come or not?"

"You won't help if he doesn't?"

"No," Evan said, a little peevishly. 

"Fine," Jared said, and added, "I bet your mom doesn’t even know you’re still talking to him.”

Evan turned away to watch Jared’s little cousins tap furiously on their controllers. Jared wasn’t a real friend (he reminded himself), but they’d known each other for more than ten years. Apparently Evan was completely predictable.

What was even more irritating: everything Jared said was true.

***

"You and I have different definitions of 'fun,'" Connor said to Evan the next day, as they waited for Jared in the school parking lot.

Connor had needed more selling on the idea than Evan expected. Evan had pointed out that they were helping Jared! And helping a family! And it could be fun!

Evan repeated, for the tenth time, "You don't have to go, if you don't want to..."

Connor threw up his hands. Today he was wearing a beaded hairtie on one wrist – plain black, but with small, polished, speckled green stones dangling from the elastic. The beads jangled from the movement. "Look, dude. I can't drive, the buses in this city are shit, and I have no friends. I'm basically shackled to my house unless someone drives me - so yes, I'll go with you. I'll go anywhere. You could say, 'Hey, let's tour this sewage plant!' and I'd be like, 'I'll bring snacks!'"

Evan mentally sighed. 

In a minute Jared finally arrived in the parking lot – carrying a thick stack of newspapers. Evan greeted him.

"Hi, Evan." Jared gave Connor a once-over, and then gave him an exaggerated nod. "Murphy."

"Kleinman," Connor returned.

"Uh...can we get going?" Evan asked.

"Sure - but don't fuck up my car, or I swear to God, I will murder you," Jared said as they walked towards his pride and joy: a blue Toyota Corolla, older than any of them, but polished and kept meticulously clean. Jared dumped the newspapers and his backpack onto the front passenger seat. "I bought this thing with my own hard-earned cash, and I need it for work."

"I'm not gonna mess up your car. Jesus," Connor said, as both he and Evan got in. "I heard we're getting paid for this?"

"Sure. We're splitting the profits sixty-forty."

"What? We should all get a third!"

"Uh, no, I'm driving, and I'm the reason any of you are getting a cut in the first place. I'm hiring you. You guys are my flunkies."

Connor kicked Jared's seat, hard. "Fuck off, Kleinman, I'm not a pushover."

"That had better not leave a mark!"

"He's not serious-" Evan said quickly.

Jared adjusted his rearview mirror and cranked the gearshift into reverse. "And no making out in the backseat."

Connor swiveled to Evan as they backed out. "You told  _Jared_?"

 _Crap_. Evan had completely forgotten: no one knew about their not-relationship, with one exception. "Sorry - I needed someone to talk to who wasn't my mom or my therapist, and he was kind of the only option…"

"Relax," Jared said. "I'm not gonna tell anyone. No one gives two shits about you two."

Before Connor could say something sharp, Evan interrupted, “What’s with the newspapers?”

“Eh. They’re old Bulletins.” The Bearcat Bulletin was the school newspaper. “In case we need to wrap up something delicate. Alana made me take ‘em – no one reads this thing.”

Connor had been looking out his window, but now Evan noticed he turned to look at Jared in the mirror. “Is Alana the Editor?” he asked.

“She thinks she’s everything. Whatever, I stay out of it. I just manage the business part.”   

Connor didn’t ask anything else. 

The storage place was about fifteen minutes away from the high school, right by a freeway exit. Rows of units with bright orange doors extended for about half an acre. It looked - deserted. Like a low-rent mausoleum. Where things came to die and be forgotten. 

Jared parked. Besides the newspapers, he also gave Evan and Connor gloves and fresh cardboard boxes from his trunk. When Evan started to walk towards the leasing office, Jared said there was no need. Marty's son-in-law had given him a key to the unit. 

"Did he tell you in writing that you could go through his stuff?" Connor asked as they walked down the rows. "Like do you have proof you can do this?"

"The key's proof. What, you're being cautious all of a sudden?"

"Just saying, if there's something actually valuable in there, and you can't prove he agreed to this, it could bite you in the ass later. People are assholes."

They found the unit. Jared unlocked it, slid back the bolt, and crouched down to lift the roll-up metal door. "See, that's your problem, Murphy. You're freaking paranoid. Not everyone is out to  _holy shit._ "

Jared staggered back. It hit Evan a second later: an ungodly, sickly stench, sharp and thick and sweet with rot. He immediately turned away, coughing.

"What the hell!" Jared said. "Did something die in there?"

"Who wants to find out?" Connor asked.

Jared looked at Evan. Evan looked at Jared. Neither of them looked at the unit. 

Connor rolled his eyes, and swiftly tied up his hair in a high ponytail. "Fine, I'll do it." 

He ripped one newspaper page in half, diagonally, and tied it around his head like a bandit from a Western, covering his nose and mouth. He disappeared into the unit. 

Evan heard shuffling, the scrape of something against the floor, and then the sound of something - several somethings - dropping into a plastic bag.

Connor came out, tying the bag closed. He tugged down his paper bandana. "Rats," he said. "Multiple dead rats. And mold. Now-" He held the bag as far away from himself as possible. "Are you ladies ready to come in?"

The rats were gone, but the smell remained. Evan swallowed hard to keep himself from gagging when they entered. 

"Mold" was an understatement. Evan could see the stains of water damage on the ceiling, and the signs of it were everywhere. Moldy books. Rotten wicker furniture. Stained, moth-eaten clothes, with holes where bugs or mice had chewed through. As far as Evan could tell it was all junk. He was scared to even touch it.

"I bet there was a leak in the ceiling," Jared said.

"Yeah, no shit, Sherlock."

Evan asked, "Are we throwing it all away? There's nothing to keep here."

Jared looked disappointed. He opened a cabinet - its door warped from water - and paused. "Well...this might be worth keeping."

Evan glanced inside. From top to bottom, the cabinet was filled with glasswork - plates, cups, ornaments and statuettes. They weren't exactly clean, but the cabinet had saved them from further damage.

But when Jared moved some of the glassware aside, Evan saw he hadn't been talking about the utensils and knickknacks at all. On one shelf was a cardboard box - wrinkled, but not damp or molded over. Jared slid it out, and Evan saw the box was stuffed with vinyl records. Their covers shifted in an accordion of colors as Jared eased it off the shelf.

"What do you think?" Jared asked.

"I don't know...Old music's not my area."

" _Ahem_ ," Connor said.

The smell was still overwhelming, so Jared carried the box outside, into the sunlight, and set it down. Connor crouched and flipped through the records. Evan saw his eyebrows rise.

After a minute, Connor whistled. "Looks like Old Man Marty had great taste in music."

Evan and Jared peered over his shoulder as he brought up the records. "Nirvana - The Sex Pistols - Zeppelin - holy shit, Pink Floyd? He even has–”

"Yeah, yeah, how much is it worth?" Jared interrupted.

Connor rocked back on his heels. "There's more to life than money, Jared," he said primly.

"Whatever, rich kid, I'm not here for life lessons, I'm here for cash."

Connor stood up and dusted off his hands. "I don't know. Could be nothing. I'm just saying he chose a lot of classics. Considering he was, what, eighty? He must've been a cool old guy. Rockin' to the Stones in the retirement home."

"Fine. Let's save this and the glass and dump the rest."

The three of them started moving everything to the dumpster out back. While Evan and Connor moved the furniture, Jared took the glassware out of the cabinet, packed them in newspaper, and stuffed the books and clothing into trash bags. It finally took all three of them to move the cabinet to the dumpster. At the end, all they had was a damp but empty storage unit - and several cardboard boxes filled with glass. 

They were finally finished when Connor placed the box of records in Jared's trunk. He stepped back. A few strands had pulled loose from his ponytail while they were working. Evan longed to smooth them back behind Connor's ear, but not while Jared was around.

Not that Jared was watching them. He was examining his trunk critically. "It's gonna be a pain in the ass to clean all these, but I guess I could donate it all to a thrift shop or something."

"Yeah," Connor said. He began tearing the bottom corner off one newspaper’s front page. "Or we could break it."

"What?"

"Haven't you ever wanted to take a bat to a shelf full of glass and just - smash it?"

Evan said "No" at the same time that Jared said "Yes."

Connor slipped the rectangle he’d torn off into his pocket. "Well, here's your chance."

"That's a lot of broken glass..." Evan said. It seemed like a waste to smash everything when they'd gone through all the trouble of saving it - but he knew Jared wasn't going to get any money for the glass. Every donation center was overfull with homegoods already. 

"It'd need to be someplace no one cares about," Jared said. 

Connor hopped up to sit on the closed trunk. "I'm a  _connoisseur_  of places no one cares about."

***

By the time they finished at the storage place it was late afternoon. Jared dropped off Evan and Connor at the Murphys' house, at Evan's request. Evan still planned to help Connor with his physics homework. 

The house was empty when they came in. Evan had felt - fine - most of the afternoon, but once the front door closed, and he heard the silence of the empty house, he suddenly felt nervous. Not just nervous. Afraid. Afraid to be alone with Connor in a private place. 

"Do you have a graphing calculator?" he asked quickly, just to chase away the silence. "Or - not graphing - any scientific calculator would work-"

Connor had chucked his backpack on the floor. Now he looked at Evan with mild, measured surprise. "Sure. I have one in my bag."

"Okay - then, should we go to the dining room? I guess? We could spread out all the textbooks and notes and stuff..."

Instead of answering, Connor bent down and calmly started untying his shoes. "You were really quiet today."

"I was?"

"Yeah." He was being very deliberate with each lace. "You hardly said anything."

With nothing to do but stand in the foyer and watch Connor unknot his laces, Evan started to fidget. He'd said nothing because - he hadn't wanted to. He'd wanted Connor and Jared to talk to each other, and not to him. 

Here was the real reason he'd asked Connor to help: no one in the world, not his mother, not his therapist, not their classmates or teachers, and definitely none of the Murphys, would tell him being with Connor was a good idea. Jared wouldn't either. But if he could get Jared to see Connor during his more-sane moments...maybe Jared wouldn't approve of it even then, but at least he'd understand. At least there'd be one other person on Earth who could see the good in Connor. Who could reassure Evan it wasn't insane to like him. 

Evan said, "I had nothing to say."

Connor slipped out of his shoes and stood up. "Scared again? I told you I'm interested, even in the everyday stuff..."

Connor stroked one finger down Evan's bare forearm, and Evan felt as though a shock darted through him. He stepped away. "Right - so - uh, you said you're on chapter five? Vectors and stuff? Do you have a pencil? Never mind, I think I have one-"

He fumbled through a zippered pocket in his backpack, found the pencil, and then struggled to close the pocket again. 

When he looked back up, Connor was standing still. He was gripping the back of his own neck. "Evan, listen-"

"...What?"

"I'm okay being just friends, if that's what you want. We can just - talk. And study. And do normal friend things. We don't have to be anything else."

Evan gulped down a breath. 

He was afraid to close the distance, afraid to ask for what he wanted, afraid that Connor would wake up one day and leave him. He was afraid of Connor's touch, and of never being touched again.

Evan said haltingly, "No, that's not what I want. I..." He shut his eyes. It was easier to talk if he couldn't see him. "I like you. In fact...when you came back, I wanted to kiss you, but I didn't know how to start."

"Oh, Jesus," Connor said. 

Evan opened his eyes - and immediately closed them again, as Connor stepped forward and kissed him on the mouth.

Now this felt like a homecoming at last. Connor was alive, and solid, and in his arms. They fell easily to the couch. 

Connor was urgent but gentle - gentler than Evan, in fact, who didn't know what he was doing. He had no idea if he was kissing Connor correctly. He didn't know where to place his hands - so he placed them everywhere, on Connor's narrow waist, his shoulders, his head.

Something was missing. Evan reached up and undid Connor's ponytail, slipping the hairtie onto his own wrist. Connor chuckled briefly as his hair came tumbling down, until Evan started kissing him again. 

As focused as he was on Connor, he almost didn't notice the sound of a garage door opening - and even hearing it, didn't recognize its importance until he also heard a car door slam shut. 

He pulled apart from Connor. "Was that...?"

Connor clambered off of him just as the door to the garage opened. 

Zoe walked in. She stopped in surprise at the sight of Evan and Connor in the living room. 

"Hey, little sis," Connor said, with an exaggerated wave.

"Hey...Evan," she said. Her eyes traveled over them, and Evan became acutely aware of their unnatural position on the couch - both on one end, with Connor pressed right up against his shoulder and thigh.

She frowned. "Were you guys just staring at the wall?"

"Actually." Connor squeezed Evan's arm. "Evan's helping me with some physics homework. Right?"

"Yes," Evan squeaked.

Zoe rolled her eyes. "Whatever. Mom's here too, just FYI."

"Oh shit," Connor said, and scooted over to a safely platonic distance just as Mrs. Murphy entered. 

Mrs. Murphy was happy to see Evan - much happier than he expected, in fact - and with her bustling in the kitchen, Evan and Connor didn't have much choice but to actually go to the dining room and actually review kinematics problems. Every now and then Evan caught her peeking into the room, checking on her son and his friend as if they'd all disappear without her to witness it. 

Evan had worried the Murphys wouldn't want him around their son, for Evan's own safety. He suspected now that they were in favor of anything and anyone that might keep Connor alive. 

After about an hour, Mrs. Murphy's sing-songy voice floated out of the kitchen. "Connor, did you invite your friend to dinner?"

Evan rapidly shook his head at Connor. He wasn't ready for dinner with all the Murphys yet.

"No," Connor called to his mom. "He needs to go home soon."

"Tell him he's always welcome!"

"Okay."

"Tell him thank you for the homework help!"

" _Okay_."

"Tell him I make the best mushroom stroganoff!"

Connor had shut his eyes. He seemed to be counting to ten. Finally he just punched himself in the arm. "I  _will_ , Mom."

Since Mrs. Murphy was busy cooking, she called down Zoe to take Evan home. She had to stand at the bottom of the staircase and call a few times before Zoe responded. 

When she came down, Zoe didn't talk back to her mother, but she made it clear she wasn't happy about this chore all the same. She grabbed her car keys and headed to the garage without even telling Evan to follow. He had to say goodbye to Connor and Mrs. Murphy quickly, fighting the absurd sense that Zoe would leave without him if he made her wait.

It was raining lightly when he got into the car.

"Thanks for driving me," he said.

"Sure," she said, voice flat, not looking at him, as she put the car in reverse.

That could have been the only thing they said to each other. Evan listened to the steady  _thwup thwup_  of the windshield wipers fill the silence. No words. No radio.

He wondered if this was what it was like for Connor every morning: sitting next to girl with her eyes straight ahead, an impenetrable wall of irritable silence around her. He wondered if there was something he could do to thaw the ice between them.

He cleared his throat. "Connor said he liked your solo at the rally last month," he tried.

This was a lie. Connor had said nothing about her solo, positive or otherwise, but he thought a compliment would help. 

"Really," Zoe said. It wasn't a question.

Evan persisted. "Yeah, he was telling me how much he likes listening to you play gui-"

"Are you dating my brother?" she asked. 

Evan was startled - but only for a second. "No," he said truthfully.  _Technically, no. We haven't gone on a 'date' yet_. 

She seemed to soften slightly. "Okay. For a second, I thought you might be." Then, as if catching herself, the wall went up again. "Not that I care. I already warned you once."

Evan looked down at his hands. "He mentioned you haven't gone to family counseling."

"Why should I? I'm not the problem. He is."

"But you care about his relationships."

He thought that would score a point, but Zoe literally scoffed. "Connor doesn't have relationships. He has hostages. Listen, I shouldn’t have brought it up. We should talk about anything other than Connor," she said. "Anything at all."

There would be no thawing tonight, apparently.  _Sorry, man. I tried_. "Did you go to the homecoming dance after all?" 

"Yeah, I went with friends. I didn't see you there."

"No, I've never been to a school dance."  _Wait, that makes me sound pathetic_. "I don't know how to dance anyway."  _Crap, that makes me sound even more pathetic_. "I mean I've been to a dance before - my friend Jared - he's a family friend - I went to his bar mitzvah, and there was dancing at the reception, so I guess that counts? Except I wasn't really dancing, I was kind of just jumping up and down. Ended up knocking over a gift table. He was...pretty upset about that."

They'd arrived at Evan's house. Evan fumbled to unbuckle his seatbelt as Zoe parked, mentally cursing at himself for recounting one of the more embarrassing moments of his life for no reason at all, but when he looked up Zoe's expression was…thoughtful, rather than pitying. She rested her arms across the steering wheel and considered him. 

Her voice was kind - and sad. "You could do better than Connor," she said.

Evan didn't know what to say to that. That he couldn’t? That he didn't want to? That every day he felt like holding his breath – that this would be the day, finally, when the spell wore off and Connor stopped paying attention to him – and so every day that Connor still spoke to him was a minor miracle?

"Thanks," he mumbled. "For the ride, I mean, not..."

"No problem."

Evan got out and closed the door, right as Zoe started to say, "Wait, is that my hairtie-?"

After he’d gone inside – after he’d said hi to his mom in the living room, and told her he’d had a fine time helping out Jared, and didn’t mention Connor at all – he went to his room and unzipped his backpack. 

He’d taken one of the Bearcat Bulletins. Jared was right: no one read the school newspaper. Evan was pretty sure it had two main purposes: to give its staff an extracurricular for college applications, and to serve as shelf lining/papier mache/book covers, as needed.

But he wanted to see what Connor had torn out earlier that day.

Below the fold, in the bottom right corner of the front page, was an advertisement:

_The Contrarian is now accepting submissions! See your work published in our school's only official literary magazine. We publish nonfiction, fiction, and poetry…_

Evan didn’t bother reading the submission guidelines. Connor liked to write; it was obvious why he’d taken the ad. What was weird, Evan thought, was that he hadn’t mentioned it to Evan. He didn’t expect Connor to tell him everything – completely expected Connor to keep secrets from him, actually, which was maybe a thing to think about – but why be secretive about something so innocent? 

Sitting on his bed, he couldn’t figure it out.


	4. Chapter 4

Evan wanted to ask Connor out on a date.

Specifically he wanted to bring him to see “George,” the locust tree. The tree lived on a hill outside the town, and Evan thought maybe they could visit one afternoon, and bring lunch, and take in the view…

He thought about it, actually, the same way he thought about college applications: as something he should maybe-probably-definitely do, but was also destined to fail at. He thought himself into circles. When should he ask? Was it even necessary? If they just kept hanging out one-on-one, did that count? What was the difference between hanging out and dating anyway?

Evan thought about it, but it turned out Connor didn't have a lot of free time. He had family counseling on Mondays, psychiatrist appointments on Thursdays, community service on Saturdays, and group therapy on Sundays - which Evan had imagined as a share circle in a church basement or something, but was more like a class, with a workbook and take-home exercises. He had check-ins with his probation officer. He had makeup assignments for all the schooldays he'd missed. And, of course, he had all the regular homework and tests to study for.

They still saw each other at lunchtime and, increasingly, at Connor's house after school. Evan had worried that they'd run out of things to talk about if they saw each other every day. It turned out he shouldn't have worried. Connor wanted to know everything. 

_What's your favorite book? Favorite movie? Favorite song? Cats or dogs? Do you believe in God? Do you mind that I don't? What's the happiest you've ever felt? ...Okay, if your happiest day was when you were six, does that mean it's all been downhill for the past decade? You're telling me you reached your peak in the first grade. That's fucking tragic._

_What countries do you want to visit? What would you do there? Would you want to know how you’ll die? How about when?_

_How do you feel about tattoos? Nose rings? I was thinking of getting a dotted line on my wrist, and then the words "To exit, open here." No, I wouldn't actually do that. Jesus, relax, I was joking. I was never a cutter. Whenever I want to hurt myself, I just pick a fight with someone bigger than me. So if you got a tattoo, what would it be and where would you put it? Don't say a goddamn tree. ...Okay, fine, I guess that tree sounds pretty cool._

_When did your parents divorce? Where does your dad live now? Do you miss him? Do you think your social anxiety stems from lingering abandonment issues, and now you're terrified of reaching out to people because they might reject you like your dad did? What's your favorite Pokémon? ...Why would you say Magikarp. Why are you so bad at this._

Evan had never been so thoroughly interrogated in his life. 

Besides being asked, Evan was learning things too. 

He memorized everything Connor told him. He quizzed himself throughout the day, as if checking his pockets to make sure the memories were still there: _He likes Russian composers (but not Tchaikovsky). His favorite subject was art, but he took it three semesters in a row so he can't take it again. His favorite color is yellow, but his favorite nail polish color is dark blue. He says Zoe stopped buying it once she realized he liked it_...

He studied what subjects to avoid. _Don't bring up his mom. Or his dad. Or his psychiatrist. Don't bring up any of the things he did to hurt himself in the past, unless he starts to talk about it himself_. 

He learned about touch.

He was learning a lot about touch.

He still kept the hairtie on his wrist. Since Evan'd had his cast removed, he liked having something of Connor's on him at all times. Connor noticed it the very next day. 

"Keep it," he said. "It wasn't mine anyway."

It was lunchtime, and they were studying at the picnic tables outside the school's auditorium. Or at least Connor was studying. Evan was reading the latest Bearcat Bulletin. He noticed Alana was in half the bylines. Connor said it was because she was the only one who gave a shit.

After glancing over the ledes ( _A new security camera was installed in the orchestra’s closet, after a vandalism incident last month. A potato cannon is missing from the physics lab. The newspaper has a carwash fundraiser in two weeks_...) and finding nothing interesting, Evan went back to playing with the hairtie, clacking the beads together meditatively. "She hates it when you steal from her," he said.

"It's the sacred right of the oldest child to mess with his younger siblings," Connor said. He circled his final answer and passed the sheet back to Evan. "And she only talks to me when she's mad," he added, like an afterthought.

Evan looked at the paper, but his mind wasn't on it. "Have you thought of...you know...talking to her?"

"About what?"

"Anything. The weather. It doesn't matter, does it? Because-" Evan chose to launch into speculation. "I think she wants to talk to you. She's trying really hard not to care, but people only do that when they care, like, a lot. So maybe if you just told her really sincerely how you feel-"

Connor burst out laughing. Cold, mirthless laughter. Evan frowned.

"Spoken like a true only child, Evan," Connor said.

Evan paid attention to the paper now. He started to mark up Connor's work. "I'm not. An only child, I mean."

"What?"

"I have half-siblings in Colorado. Or I know of them. I don't really know them. We've only met, like, twice."

"So basically they're just spare kidneys."

"No!" Evan said. "I don't think of them that way. I'd like to know them, I just - never had the chance. I think I could've been a good big brother, if they lived closer." He gave Connor his paper back. "So you got this problem, but what if the force is at a forty-five degree angle? Can you solve it then?”

“Mother _fucker_ ,” Connor said, but took the page. He started calculating.

Evan watched him write. Connor was really trying. He knew – because Connor had told him – that it was mainly out of spite ( _“Fuck that dumbass bitch. I’m gonna blow her goddamn mind.” “Connor, maybe…maybe keep that to yourself?”_ ), but he liked to believe that Connor genuinely wanted to do well…even if that desire was buried so deeply that no one else could see it. Be a better student, and son, and friend. Be someone his sister could admire instead of fear.    

Or that was what Evan wanted, anyway.

As Connor sketched a triangle for the vector components, Evan asked, “Are you writing something for The Contrarian?”

“No.”  

Evan expected Connor to hide things from him, but he didn’t expect outright lies. _I saw you take their ad_. “Why not?”   

Connor ignored the question. “The net force is thirty newtons. Do you want to check my math?”

“It’s just – I think you’re a good writer, and it’d be nice if other people could see it too? I don’t think anyone else knows that you-”

“Stop.”

Evan felt the word as sharply as a rap against the knuckles. When he looked up, Connor had slid his graphing calculator into its case with a final _click_.

“Maybe I was thinking about it. But I don’t want to. Nothing’s good enough.”

“I–”  

“You want me to do all this shit, but I already have therapy three times a week. I don’t need a life coach too. So stop.” He started to put his things away.

“I…I wasn’t trying to force you.”

“Good idea,” Connor said. He zipped up his bag. “Stick with it.” 

He left then to put his physics textbook back in his locker, leaving Evan to head to their English class early. As he entered the main school building without him, Evan thought, _If he's trying this hard not to care, he must care. A lot_. 

Evan wasn't the first to arrive at their classroom. Pete was sitting on the floor some feet away from the door, back to the wall, knees drawn up, sketching something in a notebook. 

Evan had felt terrible when Pete came back to school with his mouth wired shut. Evan's own bruises were completely healed. The fight had done no lasting damage to him. But Pete's jaw was still broken weeks later, and Evan was pretty sure Pete's family was even poorer than Evan's. He knew all the signs: the white T-shirts that came three to a pack, the shapeless Costco jeans, the fraying vinyl on a knock-off backpack. He could only guess how high the hospital bill must've been. 

Despite that, Pete had told no one about the fight in the band closet, or at least Evan and Connor had never gotten in trouble for it. He never spoke to Evan. In fact he hardly spoke at all: he could talk even with the wires, but his voice was lispy and strange, like a ventriloquist's.

Broken bones seemed like too harsh a punishment to Evan, so he wanted to - not apologize, but show sympathy. Connor had hurt someone badly. He would not have hurt him if Evan wasn't involved. Maybe the hurt was justified, but Evan still felt partly responsible for the pain, and the surgery, and the cost.

And since Connor was gone and no one else was around...

"Hey," Evan said.

Pete looked up. Because of the wires, his teeth were always bared in a forced, ghoulish grin. It gave Evan chills to look at him directly.

"I wanted...I wanted to say sorry, for what happened. Sorry you're still hurt, I mean. I know how painful, and expensive, it can be to have a broken bone, so...I hope you get better soon."

Pete wrote something in his notebook, then turned it around so Evan could see.

He'd been drawing an impressive sketch of Spawn. Every muscle was finely detailed, and his cape and chains swirled around him. 

Scribbled above the drawing were the words "FUCK OFF."

Pete was actually grinning now. Evan stepped back in disgust - right into Connor.

More students had arrived now, and Ms. Giordano was opening the door. As their classmates filed in, Connor grabbed Evan's arm. His grip wasn't tight - not painfully tight - but Evan was aware it could become painful at any moment.

His voice was very low. "I thought I told you not to speak to him."

Evan's first thought was,  _Jeez, I'll speak to whoever I want_. But he didn't feel like getting into an argument with Connor now, and was pretty sure Connor hadn't actually heard him talk, so instead he just said, "I wasn't."

Connor let go of him. They both went into English, Evan rubbing the spot on his arm where Connor had grabbed him.

Evan was annoyed for the rest of the class - with Pete, with Connor, with T.S. Eliot's impenetrable similes. ( _How can the sky be like a patient etherized upon a table? That makes no sense_.) Towards the end Ms. Giordano asked everyone to take a handout from a stack on her desk. Pete sat near the front. When Evan took a handout and passed by, Pete casually handed him a folded notebook page. Head down. Not even looking at Evan. An easy-to-miss movement.

Evan sat back down at his desk and glanced at Connor. Connor was nose-deep in poetry, for once - English and Spanish being the only two classes he liked - and not paying attention to Evan. Evan unfolded the page beneath his desk, in his lap.

It was the same drawing of Spawn. Evan wondered if Pete had just really wanted Evan to get the message, until he realized something was written on the back.

_OK._

_My beef's not with you. It's with Connor._

_But I'll talk to him if he talks to me first._

_I'm sorry for hitting you. I'm glad your arm's better_. 

Evan almost wanted to turn around and tell Connor, "See, you didn't have to be so paranoid" - but didn't, of course. If Connor and Pete just pretended the other was dead for the rest of the year, that was probably for the best. 

Evan did not dare disturb the universe. 

***

A text conversation.

**Jared Kleinman [12:10 PM]:** Hey Evan

**Jared Kleinman [12:10 PM]:** Tell ur boyfriend I want to smash stuff tomorrow.

**Evan Hansen [12:11 PM]:** He’s not my

**Evan Hansen [12:11 PM]:** I mean

**Evan Hansen [12:12 PM]:** We haven’t had that conversation.

**Jared Kleinman [12:12 PM]:** Oh for fuck’s sake

**Jared Kleinman [12:13 PM]:** Tell your exclusive long-term friend-with-benefits that I want to smash stuff tomorrow.

**Evan Hansen [12:13 PM]:** Shouldn’t we wait until a weekend?

**Jared Kleinman [12:14 PM]:** No. Tell you why later.

**Evan Hansen [12:14 PM]:** K

**Evan Hansen [12:15 PM]:** BTW, did you sell the stuff from the storage unit yet? (just wondering)

**Jared Kleinman [12:16 PM]:** May have hit a speed bump. Turns out, Marty's family? Total assholes. I used to feel bad that they never visited him, but now I'm glad. He was probably happy to get away from them.

**Evan Hansen [12:17 PM]:** What did they do?

**Jared Kleinman [12:17 PM]:** So Marty’s son-in-law was the guy who hired me, but it turns out he DIDN’T TELL HIS WIFE. Guess he assumed she’d be okay with it? Anyway she’s pissed off that the unit was emptied, and I’m like, screw you guys, I’m not giving anything back, we had an agreement.

**Jared Kleinman [12:18 PM]:** I already sold half the stuff anyway.

**Evan Hansen [12:19 PM]:** Did you find out how much the records are worth?

**Jared Kleinman [12:19 PM]:** Yeah

**Jared Kleinman [12:20 PM]:** Don’t worry, I’ll pay u as soon as I’ve got cash in hand.

**Evan Hansen [12:21 PM]:** OK. Hope you’re having an easy fast.

**Jared Kleinman [12:25 PM]:** My dad’s in the ER.

**Evan Hansen [12:25 PM]:** What?

**Jared Kleinman [12:26 PM]:** NVM. I’ll tell you more tomorrow.

***

Evan had been having a pretty good Wednesday. In his AP U.S. History class, their teacher had divided the class into Loyalists and Patriots, and then made them argue for or against leaving the Empire in a mock Continental Congress. Evan had spoken up in favor of the Stamp Act. Granted, he was sweating the whole time, but he’d managed. (Connor had smirked when Evan told him about it later. “Good job, Samuel Seabury.”)

But then he’d gotten a text from Jared at lunch. That was already weird: Jared almost never texted him, and he wasn’t even at school that day. It was Yom Kippur. Jared was supposed to be at home fasting and thinking repentant thoughts.  

Had his dad’s cancer come back? Jared’s dad had already beat cancer twice – once when they were seven, and once when they were thirteen. They were always afraid that it’d return. Or: Evan was foggy on the details, but during the last bout one of the cancer drugs had done something very bad to his heart. He knew Jared’s dad might need a transplant in five years, if he lived that long. Was his heart acting up now?   

Either way, there was nothing Evan could do, but it stayed in the back of his mind even as he went over to Connor’s house to study. Or at least Evan studying. Connor was kissing Evan's neck. 

"One more problem," Evan said. He gathered up his legs on Connor’s bed. "'A five hundred kilogram piano slides six meters down a twenty degree incline. Its coefficient of kinetic friction is…'"

"Oh, come on," Connor whined slightly, but Evan passed him the textbook.

"Dude, your exam's tomorrow. One more."

"Fine." 

Evan watched as Connor read the problem, made a little sketch, and finally scratched out some algebra on the page. The bedroom was littered with similar sketches. Evan saw scribbled-over calculations everywhere, on balled-up notepaper and the backs of flyers and envelopes. It looked like something out of _A Beautiful Mind_.

"Five hundred kilos is fucking huge for a piano," Connor said as he plugged numbers into his calculator. "I'm pretty sure ours was nowhere near that."

"You had a piano?"

Connor passed Evan his scratch paper. "Twelve thousand newtons."

"Right!" 

"Good," Connor said, and pushed Evan down on the bed. 

They'd done this before. The first few times - and still now, if he stopped to think about it - Evan had been anxious and apologetic. He wasn't sure how to do...anything. Luckily, at least with this, Connor was a patient teacher. Every time Evan made a mistake Connor was eager to try again, happy to teach by example. 

But now Evan wasn't ready to let the question go. "No, really… when did you have a piano?" he asked as Connor returned to the same spot on his neck. Privately, Evan’d always thought it was weird that a kid who loved music as much as Connor couldn’t play any instruments. “Did you take lessons?"

Connor stopped kissing him.

For one terrified second Evan thought he'd finally said the wrong thing, except Connor hadn't moved. He stayed where he was for a long moment, nestled against Evan's side, and then finally pulled away and propped himself up on his elbows. 

Evan reached up to stroke Connor's side. He'd learned there really was no wrong place to touch Connor.

"I had piano lessons," Connor said. "For a while. I wanted to learn it because you don't need anyone else, with a piano. You don't need to be part of a band or an orchestra. A piano's complete by itself. And I liked it. But I was a bad kid, and when my parents tried to punish me nothing worked. I didn't care about having toys or games taken away. I didn't care about dessert or my allowance. If they gave me extra chores, I'd do a shitty job on purpose. The only thing I cared about - was the piano. It had a lockable lid over the keys. So my dad had the bright idea to just lock the piano when I was bad."

Touching his side, Evan could feel Connor's breathing. The expansion beneath his ribs.

"It actually worked, a few times," he continued. "I hated that it worked. So I self-sabotaged. 'You think you can hurt me by taking away something I love? Fine. Then I won't love it anymore. Now you can't hurt me.' I stopped playing even when I could. They knew I was just being a bastard. But I never practiced, so they stopped the lessons. And then they sold the piano."

"You could take it up again," Evan said.

"No, they were right," Connor said. "I don't deserve it."

Evan pulled Connor down and kissed him.

He'd meant for it to be comforting, but Connor deepened the kiss almost immediately. Connor settled half on top of Evan, entwining their legs, veiling him in with his hair. 

A soft, fuzzy, glowing happiness filled Evan's chest and pooled out to his limbs. This was easy – in the end, as natural as breathing. He hadn't imagined feeling this safe...until he felt Connor's hands slide down to his waist, and start unbuckling his belt.

Evan broke the kiss. "Wait," he said. "I'm not - I'm not really ready for..."

Connor stopped undoing Evan's belt, but his hands stayed at Evan's waist. When Evan looked at him, he thought he saw a fine impatience in Connor's eyes.

Connor's voice was low. "What do you want to do, then?"

_I don't know,_  Evan thought.  _Keep kissing you?_ But that didn't seem like enough. He didn't want Connor to get bored with him. 

It felt like he needed to concede something. 

"Anything - above the waist - is fine," Evan said.            

"Really?" Connor asked. He looked at Evan closely, then rolled off of him a little. "Take off your shirt."

Evan did not want to do this.

Connor was elegantly slender. Evan was - not. He wasn't fat, but he was acutely aware of the fleshy softness in his chest and stomach. The fishbelly whiteness of his skin. He didn't want Connor to see all that. But Evan felt he couldn't refuse now, after suggesting it, so he unbuttoned the top of his polo shirt and clumsily pulled it over his head. He didn't look Connor in the eye. He didn't want to see any disgust or disappointment that might be there - and so, when Connor pushed Evan's shoulder to lay him down on the bed again, Evan already felt slightly disembodied. As if a hand was doing this to him, and not Connor at all.

As Evan stayed still, Connor started kissing his throat, his collarbone, the space above his scampering heart - in a line almost to Evan's navel, where he stopped.

Evan's breaths were shallow. His hands stayed rigidly at his sides. He waited.

Connor suddenly sat up. "No. You're not into it."

All at once, Evan felt he could breathe again - but he also turned red with embarrassment. "I - um - sorry..."

Connor had picked up the notebook again. He uncapped a pen with his teeth. "Think I need to memorize all these formulas?" he asked. "Or do the regular kinematics equations cover them?"

Evan was truly at a loss now. He pulled his shirt back on, feeling he'd done something wrong - hurt Connor in some way - had failed or stumbled or...something. "The regular ones are fine...as long as you remember gravity's negative, going down."

Connor shrugged. He was putting his textbook away. 

"I'm sorry," Evan said again. He didn't know what he was apologizing for, exactly. He just wanted things to be as they were a few minutes ago, before everything had somehow shifted. 

"For what?" Connor asked. "You'd better go, if you want to be home by six."

Evan started to gather up his things. One book had half-fallen under the bed – Evan knelt on the floor to move some scratch paper out of the way. When he grabbed one paper, he caught the edge of a verse on its margins:   

_desire thin and dry as skin_  
_crumbling at a first touch_  
_I want_  
_to fly_  
_apart_

Poetry.

Evan glanced back at Connor. Connor wasn’t looking at him, at the moment. He was writing something on a notecard.

Evan looked back under the bed again. Pages of poems, hastily scribbled. Connor had composed them…and then just used them as scratch paper for homework. 

Evan quickly swept it all into his backpack before Connor could catch him – before he could think about it. When he stood up, Connor still wasn’t looking at him. 

Evan zipped up his bag. He said goodbye to Connor at the bedroom door, but he couldn't shake the feeling, as he made his way down the stairs, that something had gone wrong.

When he reached the front door, he saw Zoe on the porch. 

The day was warm for October. She was sitting on the porch swing, watching a video on her phone. When Evan closed the door, she took her earbuds out.

"Hey," she said. 

"Hi."

"Leaving?"

"Yeah."

He saw her glance at the hairtie still on his wrist, but she didn't ask for it back. Instead she asked, "Did you ask Connor to..."

"What?"

She hesitated. "He's been talking to me. On our ride to school. About nothing. He literally started talking about the weather last week. And if I don't reply, he just chatters on about whatever pops into his head. It's really freaking weird. I wonder if you put him up to it?"

"Maybe he just wants to talk to you," Evan said. "I mean, you guys didn't talk at all...while he was away..."

"We don't talk when he's  _here_. That's what makes it weird."

"Who's being weird?"

Connor was at the front door. Evan’s heart leapt up – had he noticed the stolen poems already? – but then he noticed Connor was holding Evan’s own calculator.

Evan saw Zoe look at Connor's hands - and then look away, fidgeting quickly with her phone.

"You left this."

As Evan took his calculator back, Zoe said to her brother, "I see you've been stealing again."

"Yeah, right," Connor said. "You're just embarrassed to admit it was a gift."

"You could at least apologize," Zoe muttered.

Evan was confused by this whole exchange - then even more confused when Connor threw himself on the porch floor, clutching his heart and gasping like he'd been stabbed.

"Oh, little sister!" Connor moaned, like an overwrought Shakespearean actor. "Eternal night approaches! Before I surrender forever, I want you to know - I'm sorry I was such an ass to you all these years. I'm sorry for all the times I made you feel unsafe in your own home. And...you need to know..." He rasped out the final words as if struggling for breath. "You look...like a monkey...and you smell...like one too."

Connor pretended to choke, and finally lay flat as a starfish, tongue lolling out of his mouth.

Zoe stared. Evan thought there was the slightest shimmer of tears in her eyes. Then she plugged her ear buds back in and swiped her phone open again. "You're such a brat," she said.

On the drive home Evan thought about what had happened when Connor first came to the porch. Zoe's pointed glance at his hands.

His fingernails, Evan remembered, were painted dark blue. 


	5. Chapter 5

Maybe it wasn’t right to take Connor’s poems when he clearly hadn’t meant for them to be read. But Evan didn’t believe Connor when he said “nothing’s good enough.” He believed that Connor wrote well, and that he secretly wanted his writing to be seen. He just needed some encouragement. Evan was _helping_ him.

More than that: he expected to fall in love with Connor’s words. He thought the poems might reveal something of his soul, something rare and delicate and sublime. He settled into bed that night and unfolded the stolen papers as reverently as a secret.

Instead, Evan found out he didn’t really ‘get’ Connor’s poems.

He could tell they were dark and kind of weird. He couldn’t really tell what was going on in them, or if they were good or not, even after several rereadings. 

He did like individual lines.

_Emptiness isn’t empty_  
_It swells like a cancer_  
_Twists and pounds and claws at the walls of a heart_  
_Thudding inside like an unanchored weight_

Or

_Screams that reach the lightning-lit horizon_  
_To be swallowed up by thunder_  
_And washed away in the dissolving rain_

Or

_I will spark and rise like embers_  
_Scatter in a glittering cloud of ashes_  
_And settle as softly_  
_As the nothingness of sleep_  
_I will be consumed_  
_I will be light_

Mostly he was confused. Evan only ever read poems for school. (Come to think of it, the only person he knew who read poetry for fun was – Connor.) If someone told him the poems were wonderful, he’d believe it. If someone told him they were awful and amateurish, he could believe that too. He didn’t know what to think. 

He kept the poems in his bag – planning to put them back in Connor’s room the next time he was over (Connor would never even know they were gone) – and woke up with lines still repeating in his head the next day. Senior Portrait Day.

The senior class was large, so picture-taking was divided up over three periods, by surname. A-H went during fourth period. I-Q went during fifth period, after lunch, and R-Z went during sixth.     

When Evan skipped out of his history class to go to the gymnasium, he was pretty sure there’d been a failure of planning somewhere. There was no way the photographers could get through all the kids in one day.

The gym was warm and stuffy from all the hundreds of teens in formalwear. Most of the girls were taking it seriously, in nice blouses or dresses. Some of the boys were wearing full suits, but a lot of them had taken the opportunity to wear ties and blazers on top with pajama pants or gym shorts below. Evan couldn’t pull off that kind of cheek. He was wearing his full suit, with his tie pulled tight.

Evan had discovered that morning that it was possible to be horrified and pleased at the same time. He’d found a hickey on his neck from yesterday. On one hand, he definitely did not want that immortalized in his senior photo. On the other hand – he’d never had one before. He kept self-consciously checking his collar, both making sure it was hidden and reminding himself, with a secret, guilty thrill, that it was still there.        

The photographers had set up under the basketball hoops: one line for girls, one line for boys. The line for boys seemed to be going faster, but it was still long. Evan stood at the end of the line and watched the other students goof off ahead of him, reapplying lipstick or fidgeting with their hair. 

One student wasn’t just waiting. Alana was going down the line, trying to talk to people and holding up a small voice recorder as they spoke. Evan figured she’d already had her picture taken. She seemed like the kind of girl who’d hustle to be the first in everything.

Everyone knew Alana was the smartest girl in school. Everyone knew she was going to be valedictorian. And everyone knew that she was, frankly, an insufferable know-it-all. In every class Evan had taken with Alana, all their classmates regarded her with a combination of impatience and grudging respect.

Today there was more impatience than respect, however. No one was stopping to talk to her. Some laughed. Some turned away, blocking her from conversation. Alana was indefatigable. After every rejection, she just moved on to the next person. Eventually she was within earshot.

“Hi, I’m with the Bearcat Bulletin–”

“The what?”

“The school newspaper.”

“The school has a newspaper?”

“We do,” she said, “and I’m wondering if you could say a word for an article I’m writing–” 

“Sure,” someone interrupted. “School sucks, and Vanetti can suck my _balls_!”   

Ms. Vanetti was one of the vice principals. A lot of the boys had (what could be charitably called) a crush on her. Alana paused for a few seconds, then stepped away with a quiet, “Thank you for your time.”

“You can talk to me,” Evan said.

He probably hadn’t said it loud enough. Alana was already starting to pass him.

“Alana?” 

She turned. “Oh, hi, Evan.”

“You can talk to me. If you want. What’s this about?”

The gym was full, but the line was sprawling – there was plenty of space between Evan and the people in front and behind him. Students clotted into little friend-groups. As Evan shuffled ahead to stay with the line, Alana stuck to him. “I just thought I’d write a little article for the Bulletin about senior portrait day. Get some pull quotes about graduating, or what people did to prepare.”

Evan thought the article sounded pretty lame. Alana seemed to catch his expression. “It’s a fluff piece, for sure, but we need _something_ to fill the space and no one else will do it.”    

_Because Alana’s the only one who gives a shit_ , Evan remembered Connor saying. “Okay. Ask me whatever.”     

She interviewed him. He ended up telling her about the whole ordeal of buying a suit from Macy’s. “It looks fine,” she said.

“Thanks. You…uh…” Evan had it programmed into him that when someone compliments you, you’re supposed to compliment them back. But truthfully Alana was wearing a lace blouse that made her look about forty years old. He decided to lie. “You look really pretty.”   

Alana turned off her voice recorder. “Really?” she asked. She sounded flattered. “I wore this top to something two years ago, and my lab partner said it made me look like an old woman.”

Her sophomore-year lab partner? “Do you mean – Connor?”

“Yes! You remember him?”

“Yeah, we’re…friends, now.”

He hesitated to say even that much. To his surprise, Alana laughed out loud. “No, you’re not.”

“Why not?”

“I’ve _never_ seen you two together,” she said. This, Evan had to admit, was a side effect of mostly hanging out at the edge of campus where no one could see them. “Besides, you’re sweet and shy, and Connor’s a _disaster_.” 

Evan had been hesitant to talk about their friendship, but now he was annoyed at being disbelieved. Connor had noticed the care she took with the Bulletin. He’d asked after her position. Of all their classmates, she was the only one Connor ever mentioned with respect. “He’s only said nice things about you.”  

Evan made a sudden decision.

He crouched down to open his backpack. “In fact – I can prove we’re friends.”  

If Connor had doubts about his writing ability – who better to ask than the smartest girl in school? The editor of the newspaper? The only senior, other than Evan, that Connor kind-of sort-of liked?

Evan took out Connor’s poems. “He gave me these.”

“What?”

Her eyes widened when Evan handed her the poems. She looked through the pages. “I know he wrote, but he never let anyone read his poetry.”

“Yeah. Well.” _We’re just that close_ , he almost bragged. “He’s not sure if they’re good or not, so I was wondering, as a favor, maybe you could read them? And give your honest opinion? I mean, you always get A’s in English…”

She straightened the papers. “I’d be honored,” she said, with so much gravity that Evan almost laughed.  

Interview done, Alana was free to return to their history class. Evan still had a long way to go – but he felt good. He’d just done Connor a favor.

Connor couldn’t possibly be mad at him for taking the poems when all his intentions were good.

***

Evan was right. The line was so long that photographing everyone went well into lunch. He missed Connor during English too, since fifth period was I-Q’s turn to be photographed. So he was unaccountably nervous while waiting with Jared in the parking lot after school.  

"Do I look okay?" he asked. 

Jared was in a pissy mood, either sulking or complaining in the four minutes they’d been waiting. Now he gave Evan a cursory glance. "You look like a Mormon missionary."

"Come on."

"You look fine," Jared said, and cracked his knuckles impatiently. “What do you care? Portrait Day’s _over._ ”

Evan cared because Connor hadn’t seen him in his suit yet. He adjusted his collar again, surreptitiously touching the bruise beneath – the twinge of pain a tiny reminder that Connor liked him.

Jared had already taken off his tie. He was wearing a plaid wool jacket that might've looked professional in the eighties, but seemed more like a costume now.

"Is that your dad's jacket?"

"Yeah. It’s the same one he wore in his yearbook.”

That reminded Evan: something had happened yesterday. Something that’d caused Jared to text him in the middle of lunch. Evan was about to ask about it when Connor arrived, and the question instantly dropped from Evan’s mind.

Connor was wearing a navy suit jacket, cut much slimmer than Evan would dare to go, with his usual skinny jeans. He had his hair pulled back, his sleeves rolled up, and one too many buttons undone on his shirt. Evan thought he looked like a rock star.  

But one thing was missing. “What did you do to your tie?”

Connor tugged at his hair. Evan hadn’t even noticed – he’d wrapped his necktie around his head like a headband. “This is my courthouse outfit,” he said. “Or half of it, anyway.”

“You look…nice.”

Jared looked from Evan to Connor and back again. He suddenly waved between them. “Okay, _this_?” – he gestured – “Still baffles me. It’s like a shark decided to hang out with a sheep.”

The moment broke. “Yeah, fuck you too, Kleinman,” Connor said cheerfully, and opened the back door. “Did you bring the glass?”

This was why they were meeting: Connor had agreed to bring them somewhere where they could destroy all the glass they’d found in the storage unit. “I kept the best pieces to sell, but everything else, yeah. Where are we going?”

“Es muy fácil,” Connor said. “Giras por aquí–”

“Fuck off, man, we’re not in Spanish class.”

“Practice makes perfect, mi amigo,” he smirked.

As they got in and Jared pulled out of the parking lot, Evan asked Connor, “How’d your exam go?”

“Right, that. It went great. I blew it out of the water.”

“You seem happy.” 

“Yeah,” Connor said, swiping his phone open, “but it’s not just that. Check this out.”

He handed his phone over to Evan. It was open to a text conversation that Connor’d had with…

“Who’s ‘Lil Buttmunch’?”

“Oh, that’s Zoe,” Connor said.

Evan read:

\---

**Zoe:** Hey.

**Connor:** ?

**Zoe:** I have a recital in the Civic Center next Thursday. I could get you a ticket. 

**Connor:** o rly?

**Zoe:** I don't actually care if you go, I'm just allowed to give 3 tickets to whoever, so Mom  & Dad are coming. 

**Zoe:** You can come or not.

**Zoe:** Whatever.

**Connor:** Of course I'll come to your concert.

**Zoe:** K

**Zoe:** Don't set the place on fire. 

\---

Evan asked, “Why did you send her a poop emoji?”

Connor shrugged. “Don’t know. Seemed appropriate.” He took his phone back from Evan, then reached out for Evan’s hand. “She never invites me to her concerts.”

Progress at last. Jared had put the kibosh on making out in the backseat, but he couldn’t stop Connor from using Evan as a pillow, so they did that the whole ride.

Connor’s directions led them to the same neighborhood as the train station he’d shown Evan last month: an area that’d been residential, then industrial, then nothing. Now Connor instructed Jared to continue down the road, and turn right onto a single-lane street into an aspen grove. The broken asphalt crackled under the Corolla’s tires.  

“Are we going to your secret murder cabin?” Jared asked.

“’Scuse you. It’s my secret murder _castle_ ,” Connor said, just as the trees broke, and Evan realized he was half-serious.

In front of them was a decaying art deco mansion – or at least what Evan thought was art deco. He didn’t know much about architecture, but the building reminded him of retro cars and the Chrysler building, all curved corners and bare metal balconies. It was three stories tall, but the roof was completely flat. Its once-white façade was now stained over from rain and moss.

Jared rolled past the PRIVATE PROPERTY: NO TRESPASSING sign. “The hell is this?” he asked.

“I think it was someone’s house, and then it was a girl’s school for a while, and now it’s supposed to be demolished. Someone still owns it,” Connor said. “A security car passes every now and then. But mostly – people use it for drug deals.”

Jared drove around the building. “This place’s definitely haunted.”

“Hey, it’s October! Time to do something _spooky._ ”

When Jared parked at the back of the building, Evan saw there was more than one road to the school. The road they’d taken went to the front entrance, but another road led to the back…if you could call it a road. It was really just two tire tracks leading into the woods. Maybe it’d been a service road back in the day.    

Connor said the place had been completely open a few days ago. But when the boys went to the front door, it was deadbolted shut. They checked the back door and all the ground floor windows. All of them were closed and locked.

“Weird,” Connor said. “It was never locked before.”

“Maybe…we should try somewhere else?” Evan asked. He wasn’t scared of ghosts, but he was scared of breaking into a property that was still being maintained.   

Connor scoffed. “I don’t give up that easy. Any of you climbed a building?”

“ _What?_ ”

“Stairs lead to the roof. I bet they didn’t lock the stairwell, ‘cuz why would they? They don’t expect people to come in from the roof.”

Evan looked at Jared. Jared looked at Evan.

“I’ve never done that before,” Jared said.

“Yeah, me neither,” Evan said.

Connor sighed dramatically. “Okay, option two: _I_ could climb up and open a door for you. Since I gotta be gentle with you two virgins, apparently.”  

“How would you even climb up?” Evan asked, but Connor was already moving away.

“Drain pipe!” he called back.

It dawned on Evan that Connor was really, actually going to do this. He was going to scale a three-story building. “Don’t hurt yourself!”

“Dude, relax,” Connor said. “Not my first rodeo.”

For the second time that day, Evan realized it was possible to be horrified and pleased at the same time. He didn’t want Connor to fall. But he couldn’t not love the sheer audacity of it.

The first floor seemed to be the hardest. Connor had nothing to work with but the traction of his feet against the wall. He landed on a second story balcony – Evan watched him try the glass door, but it was apparently locked. He started climbing again, using the window’s frame for leverage. On the third floor – Evan’s heart was pounding hard now – he grabbed onto some decorative molding, and finally onto the eaves. He scrambled ungracefully for a bit until he finally found footing against the drain pipe again, and hoisted himself onto the roof, out of sight.

Evan exhaled.

Jared asked, “You know he’s crazy, right?”

“…Yeah,” Evan said. “I know.”

After a few minutes the front door opened. Connor appeared – a bit sweaty, but otherwise undamaged. “Back door’s completely boarded up,” he said. “Windows all sealed. This door’s just locked, though. So get the glass, boys, and come on upstairs.”

Jared asked, “You’re not helping?”

“ _Fuck_ no. I just climbed a building for you guys. Get my bag too, ‘kay? Be careful on the stairs though. Steps’re weak. Might fall through if you’re not careful.”

Despite the warning, Connor bounded up the stairs two by two, leaving Jared and Evan to fetch the boxes from Jared’s car.

“What an asshole,” Jared said, but it almost sounded like a compliment.       

They had four boxes total to bring up, which meant two trips. Evan took his time on the stairs. The outside had looked haunted, but the inside wasn’t as scary as Evan had imagined. It was dusty, with dry leaves crumbling on the ground floor, but Evan could see how the bare walls used to be hospital-white. He glimpsed tilework on the balconies and geometric patterns carved into glass doorknobs. He could see how this might’ve been a fancy girls’ school.

It was a cool, overcast day, but carrying boxes up three flights of stairs in suit jackets was still warm work – so after their first trip Jared took off his jacket. He folded it neatly and left it by a window on the ground floor.

That reminded Evan, finally, of the question he’d meant to ask. “Is your dad okay?”

“He’s _fine_ ,” Jared said. “He just scared the shit out of us yesterday. It’s a long story.”

“We have time now…”

“Okay,” Jared said as they went back outside. “So Tuesday evening. Yom Kippur’s about to start, and my dad announces he wants to fast this year. You know my dad: he’s nice, but he’s stubborn. My mom’s like, ‘No, you shouldn’t,’ and my dad’s like, ‘No, I’ve read all these studies that say people with heart failure can fast,’ and it becomes this whole thing, till finally my mom says _fine_ , go ahead, but don’t say I didn’t warn you.”

They picked up the last box and Connor’s bag. Jared closed his trunk. “So the fast starts, everything’s fine, until _I_ wake up at freaking _five in the morning_ because my mom’s knocking on my door. I ask what’s up, and she says, ‘I’m driving your dad to the ER, he might be having a heart attack.’”

“Holy crap!”

“Yeah!” Jared said. They started up the first flight of stairs. “He had like lightheadedness, chest pains, the whole thing. I wanted to go too, but she says, ‘No, you need to stay here and watch Adam and Maisie.’” Adam and Maisie were Jared’s siblings. “So _I_ can’t get back to sleep ‘cuz I’m thinking my _dad_ might _die_ , and then when the kids wake up I need to explain everything to them – about, you know, how our parents went to the hospital and by the way, Dad might not come back. No worries!”

They’d reached the second flight. “So fast-forward to one o’clock. No word from Mom and Dad because ER waits are freaking _long_. We’re sad, we’re worried, we’re _starving_ – or at least I’m starving.” Jared’s brother and sister were too young to fast. “And I am just the hangriest I have ever been. So I’m like, ‘Fuck it! I’m ordering a pizza! And we’re going to build a fucking _blanket fort_ in the _living room_!’ And I admit,” he said, “it got a little out of hand.”  

They were on the last flight – the most rickety steps yet. “I just wanted to get their minds off it, you know? Like, ‘How can we make this fort _more awesome_?’ I didn’t say no to anything. Should’ve known we’d gone too far when we were dragging the mini-fridge out of the garage. But anyway – parents finally get back around four, and the house’s a mess. The kids’re hopped up on sugar like Halloween came early. And I…broke the fast on the holiest day of the year.”

They’d reached the entrance to the roof, but Jared didn’t seem ready to leave the stairwell yet. He sounded defeated. “You know that look moms give you? When they’re ‘not mad, just disappointed?’ Yeah, I got that look. But Dad’s _fine_. Doctors think fasting gave him some bad heartburn that just _felt_ like a heart attack. So more hospital bills. Ugh.”

Jared kicked a box of glass half-heartedly. The ornaments inside tinkled, but didn’t break.

Evan said, “I don’t think you did anything wrong. You were trying to be a good brother.” But Jared snorted.

“Let me emphasize: the house was a mess. Like hurricane-level disaster. I’m the oldest. I’m supposed to make my parents _less_ worried. I’m supposed to be an _example_. If I can’t do that, what good am I? Anyway,” he said, “I want to destroy some shit.”          

Jared opened the door to the roof. 

The roof was a wide, white expanse, flat and empty. Connor was waiting for them, but he hadn’t been sitting idly by. He’d been setting up what looked like…

“Is that…” Evan started. “Is that the _potato cannon_?”

The physics laboratory had a potato cannon. Mrs. Schoenfeld used it to teach about pressure, volume, and projectile motion. Or more correctly: the laboratory had a potato cannon, until it'd gone missing last week.

“Hell yeah it is,” Connor said. “We’re not gonna just toss stuff off the roof. No, I got to make things more interesting.”

“But – we don’t have any potatoes?”

Connor held his hand over his heart in mock chagrin. “Gentlemen, you wound me. Do you think I’d steal a cannon and not bring any ammunition for it?”

“You brought potatoes?”

“Better,” he said. “Open my bag.”

Evan unzipped Connor’s backpack. Inside, he found a can of hairspray, three safety goggles – and several Ziploc bags full of what looked like large beige earplugs. When Evan took out a bag, he felt the plugs were made of hard clay.

“Salt dough,” Connor said. “First week of Art class, everyone works on salt dough sculptures. Salt, flour, water, bake it in an oven, and it gets hard as a motherfucker. As they say – it’ll put your eye out.” 

Jared had been rendered momentarily speechless. Now he said, “Connor, you’re a fucking _legend_.”

Evan gave out the safety goggles – he was pretty sure Connor had stolen them from the Chemistry lab, but decided not to ask. “Safety first, kids,” Connor said as he slipped his on. “Who wants the first go?”  

Jared did. Evan offered to set up some glassware along the edge of the roof. As he chose a few long-stemmed glasses out of the box, he saw Jared adjust the cannon’s angle, and then heard Connor say, “No, you want it to point further up. Motion’s a parabola – it’ll come down the same angle it went up.”

Evan turned to look at Connor. Connor winked at him. “See, I was paying attention.” 

As Evan set up five wineglasses on the edge, Connor pushed a salt dough plug into the barrel with a stick, sprayed hairspray into the combustion chamber, resealed the plug – and told everyone to stand back.

Jared clicked the trigger.

The plug exploded out of cannon with a burst of smoke – and whizzed right past the glasses. Jared hit nothing.

After three more tries, he finally hit a wine glass. It shattered musically, like a sudden jangling of bells.     

All three took turns setting up glasses, or preparing the cannon, or pulling the trigger. Jared improved quickly, but Evan remained a poor shot. He found he actually liked prepping the cannon more than shooting it. There was a rhythm to it: plunging the ammo down, spraying just the right amount of hairspray (too much or too little, and the spark wouldn’t catch), and setting the plug back in place. It took a certain touch. He liked taking care of this, and watching Connor and Jared improve their aim.

When his third turn came around, Connor said, “I want my targets moving.”

“What, you’re going to try for the birds?”

“Nah.” Connor turned to Evan. “Evan, could you be a dear and toss some plates up for me?”

This sounded dangerous to Evan – and he was a little embarrassed to have his weak underhand toss on display – but nonetheless, Evan obliged. He took a few plates from the box, went to the edge, and, on Connor’s command, sent one spinning up in the air like a sideways Frisbee.

Connor missed the first two, but he hit the third. The plate shattered in the air like a firework, its shards raining down on the driveway like sparks.

Obviously once Connor succeeded everyone else had to try too. Evan couldn’t hit even Jared’s slowest, easiest lobs. Connor had a better throwing arm than either of them – it took several tries, but eventually Jared was able to hit those too.  

“You could take up pigeon shooting,” Connor said, but Jared just readjusted the cannon’s angle again.

“We can’t all afford expensive hobbies,” he said.

“Okay,” Connor said, “First of all – it’s not that expensive. Secondly – my parents are rich. I’m not. As soon as I hit eighteen I’ll be living like a sewer rat.”

“Yeah? How are you paying for college then?”

For once, Connor hesitated. “I…I think my parents set up a trust?”

“Yeah, so shut up, Richie Rich.”

Evan expected Connor to make a sarcastic remark, or maybe an insult – something biting to cut the conversation off. Instead Connor turned to look at Jared and asked, “Why does it bother you so much?”

For a long second, Jared said nothing. Then he muttered, “It doesn’t. I’m gonna see if I can hit one of these trees.”

“Oh, don’t!” Evan interrupted. “They’re aspens! Aspens are cool.”

“Are any trees _un_ -cool, to you?”

“No, these really are,” he insisted. “In fact – I know it looks like a regular forest, but it’s not. Aspens share a root system, so it’s actually all one living organism. People think the oldest living thing – I mean it depends on your definition, but like one of the oldest living things – is an aspen grove in Utah. It’s called Pando, or the Trembling Giant – it goes on for acres – and it’s _eighty thousand_ years old.”

“Eighty thousand?”   

“And it’s dying,” Evan said. “Because of…drought, and hunting, and stuff.”

The boys were quiet for a moment.

“Well that sucks,” Jared said.

"Whatever,” Connor said. “People are shit, and nothing matters."

Jared asked, "Is that gonna be your senior quote?"

And to Evan's amazement, Connor laughed. An honest, unironic laugh.

It was Evan’s turn again to toss up plates. He took their last three out of the box, but stopped when he reached the edge of the roof.

He could hear something far away – the soft, rolling crunch of broken asphalt. It sounded like…

“A car’s coming.”

“What?”

Evan glimpsed a small white car with a logo on its side. He only read one word before dropping the plates and running back to the others. “It’s security!”

Connor had been in the middle of plunging a plug down the cannon. “Shit,” he muttered, but grabbed his bag from the floor.

Jared asked, “Wait, what do we–?”

“ _Run!_ ” Connor said. “Forget the cannon!” he barked at Evan, who had a half-formed thought of taking it with them and returning it to the lab.  

Connor bounded down the steps with Jared and Evan right behind him. Three flights. The steps that had seemed so stable a while ago now groaned from their running. _What if it collapses on us?_ Evan thought in a panic – but the staircase held.

They reached the ground floor – and Connor stopped them on the landing.

They could hear someone was outside the door. Fiddling with a keychain.   

Evan had worried about breaking through the staircase, or getting cut by glass, or Connor losing his footing on the climb up - but he hadn't worried about getting caught. The last two places he'd gone with Connor had felt completely deserted. Like a secret Connor was sharing with him. As long as Connor was showing him the way, it hadn't occurred to him that something bad could happen.

But now something bad was certain to happen. The front door was the only way out. The back door was boarded. The windows were all sealed shut.

Connor ran from the foyer towards the back of the house. Jared and Evan followed, but Jared asked, “What happens if we’re caught?”

“We get arrested for trespassing. But that’s not happening today.”

“How? There’s no way out!”

They’d stopped by Jared’s jacket, still folded on a windowsill.

Evan heard the front door open. A guard walked into the house, several rooms away.

Connor was still holding the stick they’d used to load the cannon. He grabbed Jared’s jacket and held it up against a window.

“Everyone stand back,” he said – and smashed the window with the stick.

The jacket kept the glass from shattering in and cutting everyone. The shards sprayed outside. Connor swung at the remaining fragments, then hopped out the window, grinding the jacket down on the sill.         

Evan followed, then Jared. Jared grabbed his jacket before running to the car. Evan could already hear an incoherent yell from the guard behind them.

Evan and Connor darted onto the backseat again. Jared started the car – and sped down the two tire tracks that led into the woods.

The tracks cut through the trees and led to a main road pretty quickly. Jared glanced at his jacket in the passenger seat. The cloth was shredded and cut through with glass splinters.

“Dude,” he said, “you _ruined my jacket_.”

“I ruined it?” Connor said. “How about I saved your ass?”

“Yeah, by taking us someplace that was still being watched!”

“You agreed to it!” Connor said. “’Sides, it’s just a jacket. It was ugly anyway.” 

“No, you don’t get it,” Evan interrupted. “It was his–”        

“Shut up, Evan!” Jared said.

“Don’t tell him to shut up!” Connor said, but Evan grabbed his hand and laced their fingers together, hard. He could feel Connor’s blood pulsing through his fingers _. Quiet_ , he thought. _It’s okay_.  

He wanted badly to explain. To tell Connor about the cancer and the bankruptcy and the pressure to not be a burden, and why this was more than just a jacket...But Jared didn’t want him to, and Jared kept Evan’s secrets. He couldn’t say anything.   

He could only hope the guard hadn’t seen Jared’s license plate, hope they weren’t being followed, and hold onto Connor until it all passed.


	6. Chapter 6

They didn’t speak much on the way back. Jared complained about his jacket under his breath. What was he going to tell his parents? That he got attacked by a horde of raccoons? He didn’t get a reply. Connor was lying down in the backseat, using Evan as a pillow again; Evan was stroking his hair, and telling reassuring lies to himself _. The guard didn’t really see us. Jared’s not really angry. We can fix this. It’ll be fine_ …

Jared dropped Evan and Connor off at the Murphys' again. But after Connor had gotten out, Jared stopped Evan. "Hang on, I want to talk to you."

This never happened. Jared never ‘wanted’ to talk to Evan. He only used him as a last resort when he needed something - material help, or a listening ear when he was bored or irritated. Evan wondered what Jared wanted this time. "...What?"

Jared turned around in his seat to face him. "So this is it? You and Clockwork Orange are gonna be a thing?"

Evan thought:  _We've_  been  _a "thing."_  And  _You're the one who keeps calling him my boyfriend. You did that before he ever touched me._  Out loud, he asked, "Why are you asking now?"

"I'm just trying to figure out what the appeal is." Jared picked a splinter of glass out of his ruined jacket, and Evan realized he'd probably been mulling something over the whole ride. "When do you think he stole the cannon?”

Evan hadn’t thought about that. “I don’t know.”

“You’re not that curious, are you? The Bulletin reported it missing _last week_. So he must’ve done it, like, the day he got back. And he mentioned breaking into that building more than once. Doesn’t exactly scream ‘reformed’ to me. What else d’you think he’s done?”

“He doesn’t tell me everything,” Evan said, then realized how that sounded. “He doesn’t _need_ to tell me everything. He can keep things to himself.”

“I’m not thinking about the stuff he doesn’t tell you. I’m thinking about the stuff you’re not asking,” Jared said. “Thing with me is, I'm loyal. Like if my little brother came up to me and said, 'You need to help me bury a body, no questions asked,' I'd just say, 'I'll get the shovel.' So with Connor - I figure if even his own family doesn't like him, he must've really fucked up. You should maybe look into that before you start picking out the china, is all I'm saying."

Evan bristled. "He's not a bad person. He's - okay, he's made bad choices, and maybe done some bad things, but he's not a bad person. It doesn’t matter who he was. I care about who he’s trying to be now." He started to get out.

As Evan stood up, Jared stopped him one more time. "Hey Evan. You know what the difference is between a bad person and a good person who does bad things?"

"What?"

"Not a damn thing."

Evan closed the door.

_Jared doesn't know what he's talking about. He doesn't know Connor like you do. No one else understands._

Evan liked this thought, so he repeated it to himself throughout that afternoon. But right alongside it was its mirror - an insistent, niggling doubt.

_You only started talking to Connor six weeks ago._

_You don't really know him either._

***

When Evan saw his mom at breakfast the next morning, he told her he'd hung out with Jared after school. He didn't mention Connor. 

She asked if Jared had told him about his dad's trip to the ER. She said Jared's mom was really stressed out. She said it'd be nice to take the Kleinman kids out on a weekend, so Jared's parents could have one evening as a couple. Because this is what you do for friends. You try to ease their burdens.

Evan asked if she just wanted to see a movie or something. She said no - it was fall, she wanted to do something fall-related. Didn't the De Jong Farm in the next town have a corn maze every year? What did he think about that? 

Evan thought it sounded like a new level of purgatory. But he knew his mom went in for the whole seasonal thing - that she was already looking forward to pumpkins and apple cider and maybe a hay ride, and that while her concern for her best friend was real and true, Jared's younger siblings were also a convenient excuse to visit the petting zoos and craft booths that Evan had long outgrown. So instead of sighing he smiled weakly and said it sounded "great." Just great.

She perked up. Not this weekend, she said. The Sunday after. It'll be - great. 

Truthfully, Evan had nothing against a farm visit. It was a homey, comforting thing to do in autumn. He just didn't want to spend more time with Jared.

Earlier that morning Jared had sent him a link to a police log report. The headline was: "Vandals Trash Building Slated for Demolition."

 _Police responded to a call reporting vandalism in the 400 block of Union Avenue. They arrived to find a large quantity of broken glass, a damaged window, and what appeared to be a homemade projectile weapon. Investigators say the damage was likely caused by teenagers who got onto the building's flat roof. Anyone with information about this case can call police at._..

Jared hadn't added a comment to the link, but Evan already knew the subtext.  _Never again_. Jared wasn't a stickler for rules, but he had a clean record to keep. He wasn't going to be seen with Connor anytime soon.

It felt like they were back at the beginning again. Jared and Connor wanted nothing to do with each other. Spending a few hours with Connor hadn’t shown Jared his good side; if anything, it’d made him even more suspicious. Evan felt as if he’d failed.   

When the lunch bell rang at school later that day - the day after the glass-breaking trip - Evan went to the physics lab to wait for Connor, as usual.

He saw other students stream out of the classroom. But Connor didn't.

Maybe Mrs. Schoenfeld was giving Connor another lecture. When five minutes passed, and Connor still hadn't come out, Evan sent him a text. 

No reply.

Evan was wondering what to do - keep waiting? Text again, and tell him to meet him elsewhere? - when he saw the school secretary walking quickly towards him. "Are you Evan Hansen?" she asked. 

"Yes-"

"Come with me - you're wanted in the vice principal's office."

Evan immediately followed. The secretary walked so quickly that Evan had to half-jog to keep up. Her heels made a sharp clip-clop sound on the linoleum. "Why, what’s going on?"

"I don't know, but it's urgent," she said, and pushed open the door to the administration's offices. The moment she did, Evan knew what this was about.

"I didn't  _fucking_  cheat!"

 _Connor_.

Evan didn't need the secretary to lead him anymore. He ran to the office where the voices were coming from, and opened the door without knocking.

The people inside were so distracted that they didn't notice him at first: Mrs. Schoenfeld; a short, slender woman Evan knew was Vice Principal Vanetti; and Connor. The women were standing. Connor was in a chair, arms across his chest and murder in his eyes. 

"Use that language again, and you'll be suspended for sure-"

"We do assume innocence until proven guilty, Karen," Ms. Vanetti said.

"His  _defensiveness_  is proof-"

Connor suddenly jumped out of his chair. "Ask him!" he said. "See, he's right there-"

The other two finally noticed Evan. Ms. Vanetti looked relieved. "Oh - please, come in, close the door."

Evan did. "What happened?"

"We just wanted to ask you a question. Our friend Connor says you were helping him with physics?"

"Yes - I took it last year. I helped him with homework."

"And nothing else?" 

"No - I just - explained concepts, and stuff-"

Mrs. Schoenfeld interrupted. "There is no way a student of Connor's ability could have passed that test, let alone aced it. I don't care how much tutoring he got. He was close to failing a week ago. He  _must_  have cheated."

Ms. Vanetti looked uncertain. "It is very unusual..."

Connor said, "Yeah, or maybe I just studied really hard, you  _cunt_."

Evan was scandalized. He whispered urgently, "Connor, you can't call the assistant principal a cunt!"

"Frankly,” Mrs. Schoenfeld said, “I don't think he's mentally stable enough to succeed in my class-"

Connor suddenly threw his chair over. It crashed onto the floor. Everyone else was startled into silence. "Give me another test!" he said. "Give me another fucking test! I'll prove it to you-"

Evan grabbed Connor's arms, pulling him away from the women. Connor struggled against him for a second, but Evan said, "Stop this. It won't help you. Stop."

Connor was tense against him, but his breathing steadied. Evan held onto him tightly.

He looked at Mrs. Schoenfeld - who looked oddly triumphant - and Vice Principal Vanetti, who looked...scared. Evan realized: Connor was younger, and taller, and stronger than her. He'd just lashed out. If Evan hadn't been there...

"Young man..." she said, and faltered. She started again. "Young man, that is  _enough_. We're calling your parents. Evan, thank you for coming. You can go."

"And maybe reconsider your choice of company," Mrs. Schoenfeld threw in.

Evan left the office, but he stayed right outside the hallway. He waited for Connor. 

Connor came out ten minutes later - slamming the door behind him. 

"Connor?"

Connor had almost missed him. He glanced at Evan. Then he looked at the ground again, and started to walk quickly down the hall. "I'm suspended."

Evan kept up with him. "What?"

"For five days. Starting Monday."

"For cheating?"

"No, the bitch couldn't prove I cheated. For running my mouth and throwing a chair. Fuck!" Evan had the sense that if there'd been a window, or a wall, or an unlucky freshman to punch, Connor would've done that - if Evan hadn't been standing next to him. "They're all against me. They want me to fucking fail."

"Connor, I...I think that's just the paranoia talking."

That seemed to give Connor pause. "Fuck," he repeated. Then, "Fuck  _me_."

Evan was pulled in two directions. 

He wanted to go somewhere private with Connor, and fast. He wanted to hold him - or at least hold his hand - and they couldn't do that anywhere they might be seen. He wanted to calm him down and reassure him that everything was going to be okay. 

He also wanted to punch Connor.

If Connor had just kept his mouth shut and acted like an adult, instead of a tantrum-throwing child, he wouldn't have been suspended. It was another demerit on the road to expulsion. How many more could his record take?

"How well did you do on the test?" Evan asked.

Connor snorted. "I got an A+. I swear, it doesn't matter if I fail or ace these things. I get in trouble either way."

This all weighed heavily on Evan through the afternoon. Connor had to stay out of trouble. Suspension meant missing class, but he still needed to keep up with the schoolwork. Maybe Evan could pick up assignments from Connor's classes. He had to help him...

This time, Evan's mom picked him up from school: it was a rare day off from work and she'd needed the car for chores during the day. Seeing her parked at the curb reminded Evan his younger years, back before he'd learned to drive.

When he got in and they drove off, she asked about his day. She said she was thinking about pot roast for dinner. He asked if her midterm was coming up soon. And then, only after all that had passed, she said, "I got a call from the school today."

His stomach dropped. "Oh?"

"You're not in trouble," she said. "There was some kind of physical altercation." She rolled to a stop at an intersection. "You didn't tell me you were still talking to Connor."

She didn't ask for an explanation. For a second Evan wondered if he could get away with saying nothing. "Just - sometimes."

"You were helping him with his homework?"

"Yeah." Maybe if he kept his answers short, she wouldn't ask him more. 

"Do you go over to his house?"

"...Sometimes." 

She waited for more, and when Evan said nothing, she sighed. "Do you think I'm going to forbid you from seeing him? I'm not. God knows, you're seventeen, that wouldn't work anyway..." She trailed off. "He just seems like a troubled kid."

Evan said nothing. He could feel her uncertainty - whether to say more, or drop it. 

She chose to charge on. "It sounds like you're doing a lot for him. Is that right? Helping with his classes? Driving him places? And friendships should be equal. What does Connor do for you?"

Evan looked out the window. "He talks to me," he said.

"And that's all it takes?"

"No one else does," he muttered. 

His mom sighed again. She sounded immeasurably tired. "Oh, Evan," she said. 

Evan's hands were clenched around his seatbelt, hard.

He was not actually as naive as others seemed to think. He didn't expect to change Connor. (Try to help him, yes - but change him, no.) And he knew, without a doubt, that Connor would hurt him. Either he'd piss Connor off for some reason or another, or Connor would simply leave him. This had happened to all of Connor's former friends and exes.  Evan didn't think he'd be the exception.

But no one could judge him for this. No one else understood. Not Jared, who talked about liking Connor as if it was a rational choice Evan had made, as if there were lines of non-crazy people waiting for Evan to date them. Not Zoe, who said Connor had hostages instead of relationships; not Alana, who thought Connor was a disaster; and not his own mother. None of them knew what Evan knew.

Spend days where no one talks to you. No one looks at you. No one ever, ever touches you. Spend years watching others form friendships so easily, as if they all know a language you can barely speak. Spend your childhood wishing you could just be normal like everyone else. Do this until you feel the full weight of emptiness in your chest, until you get used to it, until loneliness feels as natural as your own skin - except sometimes, late at night, when it suddenly suffocates you. Until those moments when loneliness crushes your heart and you wake up gasping for air.

Do that, and then meet someone who notices you. Desires you. Says he sees the good in you. Do that, and see if you care that he has a diagnosed personality disorder. And a shit list a mile long. And the mood swings of a Vietnam vet. 

 _Do all that_ , Evan thought,  _and you can judge me for staying friends with Connor._

***

As it turned out, Connor's parents worked out a deal with the administration.

Connor had already missed weeks of school. It'd be counterproductive to miss even more classes. So instead of five weekdays, he'd spend a full Saturday in detention. 

He'd avoid out-of-school suspension, or O.S.S. He'd still have three days of in-school-suspension, or I.S.S. And on top of that, he'd also have hours of after-school-suspension, or...

"I think the school board should've workshopped that one a little more," Connor said.

He sounded deflated - or maybe that was just the static of the phone. It was Friday night. Connor had called Evan from...somewhere. He'd taken up running since returning from the hospital, partly to burn energy, but mainly to get away from the house since he couldn't drive.  _The less everyone sees me, the better we get along_ , Connor had told him - half joking, half bitter. 

"What's I.S.S. even like?" Evan asked.

"It's like being in a waiting room for eight hours. Only worse, because at the doctor's they don't take away your phone. I don't know what the fuck I'm going to do."

Evan was standing in his room. He’d been watching TV with his mom when his phone rang; he’d left her to take the call. She knew it was Connor, and Evan knew she knew. She hadn’t stopped him, or even looked twice, but his heart still pounded as if he was doing something forbidden. Her tolerance was even more draining than outright disapproval, in a way. At least then he could feel self-righteous, instead of small and ashamed.       

She hadn’t offered to pause the show when he left.

"You could...read,” Evan said. “Or write. Write a story. Work on your memoir."

Connor laughed mirthlessly. "Memoirs? Seriously? You want more tales of my misbegotten youth?"

"I'd read them."

Evan heard a car pass. He wondered where Connor had run off to.

"Here's one," Connor said. "When I was nine - I built a snowman in front of my house. Yeah, I know, adorable. Except there was this sixteen-year-old down the block who crashed into it on purpose. Just to be a dick. I wasn't the only kid he did that to - there were a few snowmen, and he ran his car into all of them. But the difference between me and the other kids is that I was a vengeful little shit. So after the next snowstorm, I built another snowman...around a fire hydrant."

"Oh jeez."

"Totally wrecked that car," Connor agreed. "Hydrant blew up like a geyser, firemen came to fix it, sirens everywhere. It was glorious."

He said "glorious," but his tone was strangely listless. He didn't seem to take any pleasure in his childhood revenge.

"What happened to the guy driving?"

"Don't know," Connor said. "But you know what I learned that day? You don't have to hurt people directly. Just tempt them the right way and they'll wreck themselves."

Evan didn't like the way Connor was going. It sounded ominous. He checked the time - Connor had a ten P.M. curfew as part of his probation – and thought of his own mom, still alone in the living room… "Should you be heading back?" 

"I'm just at the Walgreens. The one that's across the street from the synagogue."

"...That's pretty far."

"Running distance," he said. "No. Keep talking to me."

"Okay," Evan whispered.

***

_A Saturday in Detention_

**8:03 AM**

Four hours. No sleep, no music, no talking, no electronic devices.

Here's the start of my apocalypse log. Per E’s suggestion.  
  
There're four freshmen in here with me. They keep staring at me and then glancing away when I look at them. I figure they're all either scared of me, or desperately in love with me. (Or hey, ¿Por qué no los dos?)

 

**8:25 AM**

Guess who was late for detention? Tim. Pete's friend. He's not even here for misbehaving. Just for missing too many assignments in too many classes. Too bad he's here. He's not a bad dude. He's just dumb as a box of rocks.

_Things You Could Do With Tim_

  1. Turn him into a stepladder
  2. Screw in the lightbulbs of high ceilings
  3. If shipwrecked on a desert island: hollow out his body and use as a canoe
  4. Feed 20+ cannibals (suitable for birthdays, weddings, bar mitzvahs, etc.)
  5. Use as bait if you want to capture one (1) Pete



 

**8:49 AM**

Completely detoxxed while I was in the psych ward. Starting to regret it now. This would go so much faster if I had some chemical help.

 

**9:00 AM**

Broke ice with the freshmen. Showed them how to make a mechanical pencil shoot staples. They've now pledged their allegiance to me. Maybe I'll have them steal something from the teacher as a loyalty test.

 

**9:31 AM**

I think the guidance counselor wanted me to think of future careers. Or he wanted other kids to think of future careers. He just wanted me to be not-dead by the end of the year.

What careers could Future-Me have?

    * Criminal
    * Artist
    * Actor? (Always had too many demerits to join Drama – too bad)
    * Something related to music?
    * Prostitute
    * Crazy alcoholic homeless person



Hahaha I’m gonna end up dead in a ditch.

 

**10:18 AM**

Teacher's a 23-year-old substitute. He couldn't give less of a fuck about being here. He's literally playing Chameleon Runon his phone right now. 

He didn’t even notice when one of the freshmen took his car key off his keychain. Seriously, if those girls decide to take his car out for a joy ride, it’ll be his fault.

 

**10:46 AM**

I just traced over all my veins with a permanent marker.

 

**11:15 AM**

I don’t know if I’ve ever experienced boredom as pure as this.

This is concentrated boredom. Unfiltered boredom. The highest legal limit of boredom.  

 

**11:44 AM**

Physics Calculations

3,000 Newtons per square centimeter can break a bone

4 m long car, mass ≈ 1200 kg

Moves at 30 m/s

Kinetic energy would be ½mv2 = 540,000 Joules  

(Make sure to hit dead-on. If you hit it wrong, it might leave you a cripple instead of killing you.)

Work needed to stop the car is F x D, so 540,000 Joules ÷ 2 m = F

F = 270,000 Newtons

  
I was too close to the tree. Needed to build up more speed. Should've started accelerating farther away.   
  
Conclusion: next time, go for pills or razors. Cars are unreliable. 

I'm getting really desperate. Talk-to-Pete desperate.

I don't know how I'm gonna take three more days of this.

***

Tuesday afternoon.

Evan hadn’t seen Connor since the Friday before. The kids in suspension couldn’t eat lunch outside of their classroom, and after-school suspension lasted for an hour beyond the regular schoolday – their times just hadn’t overlapped. But Evan was sick of the separation already. Instead of leaving, he decided to just stay on campus and meet Connor when he got out.   

He wasn’t the only kid who'd stayed. Different clubs and sports teams all had meetings after school. He even saw the newspaper staff working on posters outside – signs for their upcoming carwash fundraiser. Considering Jared was supposedly organizing the event, Evan thought it was weird that he wasn’t with them.  

He was relieved when Connor finally came out of the I.S.S. classroom. After Connor greeted him, he noticed…

“Is that Sharpie on your arms?”

“Oh. Yeah. Turns out this stuff takes a while to wear off. Anyway – what do you want to do? I finished two books today. Have you read any Gabriel García Márquez? ‘Cuz I just finished One Hundred Years of Solitude, and the ending was a _trip_ –”

Connor kept chattering on, but Evan was no longer listening. Connor seemed nervous, twitchy - on edge.

"Are you on something?" Evan asked.

Connor tucked his hair behind one ear. He gave Evan a lopsided smile. "Define  _something_."

Evan tried to stay as forthright as possible. "Did you take a drug before school today?"

Connor looked him in the eye. "No," he said calmly. "Not before. During."

"Connor-"

"Nothing illegal," he said. "The day was just going  _so fucking slow_ , and I needed something to make the time go faster. So I had some Ritalin left over from when everyone thought I had ADHD - which I don't, by the way - and I figured, hey, why not make today more interesting?"

Evan relaxed a little. "Just one dose?"

"Well. It started that way. Then two hours passed, and empires rose and fell, and stars were born and exploded into supernovae and collapsed into black holes, and I was like, fuck it! Let's chug the bottle!"

"Connor!"

"I feel great. I feel alert. My hands have been tingling all day. Also I made a sketch of you from memory. Want to see it?"

While Connor bent down to retrieve his drawing, Evan's phone rang.

 _Great, what now?_ he thought. He figured it was his mother. No one else called him. 

But when he checked the screen it was - Jared.

Connor was still rifling through his bag. "Also I might’ve…I might’ve…bought something you wouldn’t want me to buy."

"Connor, just - wait a second." He couldn't handle both Connor and Jared at the same time. Evan walked a little distance away from him before answering his phone.

"Hello?"

"Evan?" Jared's voice was clear but tinny, as if through an old radio. He didn't wait for Evan to respond. "Listen, I don't have much time - I'm calling you from a police station."

"What? Why are you in a police station?"

Jared said, "I've been arrested."


	7. Chapter 7

Evan instantly thought of the worst. The security guard had caught Jared’s license plate. The police would accuse Jared of trespassing and vandalism. They’d come for Evan and Connor next. And their respective parents would kill them all. 

"Is it – is it because we trespassed–"

"What? No!" Jared said. “It’s nothing to do with that. Remember what I said about Marty’s family? About them being _total assholes_? Guess what – they went to the police and accused me of stealing. They’re saying I broke into the storage unit and took everything without their permission. It's a freaking shit show."

Evan's mind was racing. "But why are you telling me? Call your parents!"

"Dude!" Jared's voice became lower and closer, like he was cradling the phone to his mouth. "My parents can't know. The cops tried to get my parents’ info so they could call them themselves, but I wouldn't give it."

"Why can't your parents know?"

"I'm not going to disappoint them like that," Jared said reflexively, and then, in a more measured tone, "They don’t have to know. I’ll deal with this myself. I know I’m right, so it shouldn’t be that hard."

"So...so what do you need me to do?"

"I need bail money so I can get out of here," Jared said. "It's three hundred dollars. I'm good for it!" he added when Evan inhaled sharply. "But I'm not allowed to pay my own bail. Someone else needs to pay it, in cash."

"I don't have that kind of-"

"Yeah, I didn't think you did. But look, if you go to the temple, in the secretary's office, there's-"

"Wait," Evan interrupted. He rubbed an ear lobe, hard. "Is this your money, or am I stealing from the temple?"

There was a long pause. "...I'll pay them back."

"I'm not stealing from the temple for you, Jared!"

A loud sigh on the other end. "Fine - I was trying to make it easy for you 'cuz the security guard's like a million years old and super nice, but if you want to do it the hard way, there's something else you can do."

Jared explained his idea. Evan hung up.

When he walked back, Connor was still crouched on the ground, slipping a folded sheet of paper into his pocket. He looked paler than usual. 

"Jared's in trouble," Evan said.

Connor looked up.

"I'm going to try to help him, but...do you want to help? You don't have to," Evan added quickly. "I mean - it might be dangerous."

At that, Connor grinned like Evan had just given a basket of kittens to play with. "I'm in."

This was Jared's idea: Jared was the business manager for the school newspaper. The newspaper staff met in a classroom close to the parking lot - one of the temporary trailer units away from the main school building. In the classroom was a closet, in the closet was a cashbox, and in the cashbox were all of the Bulletin's donations for that year. A little more than three hundred dollars.

Jared had given Evan the combination to open the box, along with his solemn promise that he would replace the money the very next morning, as soon he could withdraw some funds from his savings account. What Jared couldn't give Evan was a way to get into the classroom or the closet. Both were usually locked after hours. 

Luckily, "The locks on these doors are a joke," Connor said. "You got a credit card, you can open them."

"I don't have a credit card."

"Driver's license?"

Evan fumbled through his wallet. "I've got...an Old Navy gift card?"

"That'll do," Connor said.

Connor went to work on the door handle while Evan covered him, feeling extremely exposed.

"Old Navy?" Connor said as he slid the card between the door and its frame. "Jesus, you couldn't be more white and nerdy if you tried."

"Could you just - concentrate on your work?" Evan glanced back at him. "And don't hurt the card? I think there's still some money on it."

"Pfft, don't worry, it'll be safe for all your basic white boy needs." Connor bent the card towards the door’s handle – then carefully leaned on the door while shimmying the card back and forth.

The lock clicked. It gave way, and the door opened a crack. "Bingo."

Evan and Connor scurried in. Evan shut the door. He instinctively moved to turn on the lights, until Connor stopped him. "They'll see the lights, man!"

Evan checked the windows. They were covered by lowered blinds. He was glad that no one could see in – but the blinds also meant they'd have to work in the dark.

In the meantime, Connor had already found the closet, right by the teacher's desk. "Aw, shit," he whispered.

"What?"

"It's a deadbolt lock. More complicated than those lever handles." 

Evan's heart thumped hard. "So you can't open it?"

Connor opened one of the drawers in the teacher's desk.

"Why are you going through his desk?!"

"I can open it," Connor said. "I just need a hairpin, or a needle, or...okay." He took out two paperclips from the drawer. "This could take a while."

In what felt like far too many minutes to Evan, Connor straightened out the clips, and then rebent them - turning one into a hook and the end of the other into an S-shape. He stuck both into the lock and began twisting them, ear at the door, eyes closed in concentration. 

Meanwhile Evan kept checking and rechecking the blinds, opening the slats with a finger and glancing out at the parking lot. "Where did you..." Evan changed his mind. That wasn't the question he wanted to ask. " _Why_  did you learn how to do this?"

"Boredom," Connor said. "And to freak out my sister. There's a reason she has three different locks on her door." His eyes suddenly opened. "Think I heard a..." Keeping the clips in place with his left hand, he used the right to carefully turn the doorknob.

The closet door opened.

It was about the size of a regular coat closet, but with shelves all along the back wall - and to Evan's dismay, every shelf was full of different boxes, folders, and school supplies. The newspaper's cashbox could be anywhere in there.

Connor took Evan's place at the window while Evan frantically felt through the shelves, using his phone as a flashlight. 

Finally, at the bottom of the closet, he found a small, plastic box with a combination lock on its lid. He crouched down. Rolled the tumbler to the first number (his hands were shaking). Rolled the second tumbler. Started to roll the third-

"Hey - someone's coming."

"Oh -  _crap_!" There was nowhere to go. The front door was the only way in or out. 

Evan heard someone try the handle.

Connor darted away from the door and into the closet with Evan. Evan yanked the door shut - just as the front door opened.

He heard someone step into the classroom.

"Oh crap oh crap," Evan kept repeating under his breath, until Connor gripped his arm.

"Why are you freaking out?" he whispered.

"They're going to know we're stealing!"

The steps were coming closer to the closet.

"How would they know we're stealing?"

"Because  _why else would we be hiding in the closet_?"

The doorknob turned.

Connor grabbed Evan's face and kissed him just as the door opened.

It immediately shut again. "Oh - sorry!" a girl's voice said.

Evan was so relieved he stammered. "Good - good thinking," he whispered.

"You're welcome."

Space was tight, but Evan was able to squeeze down once more, enter the full combination on the lock, blindly stuff all the cash into his pockets, and lock the box again.  When he was finished, Connor slowly opened the door. Evan stepped out first.

Alana was standing nearby. 

"Evan! I'm so sorry - I didn't know anyone was in here, I just came in for -  _Connor_?"

Connor gave her a broad smile. "Hi, Alana."

Alana's demeanor completely changed, from apologetic to annoyed. "'Hi Alana'? You haven't spoken to me in months!"

"Sorry about that-"

"You blocked me on Instagram!"

"I'm never on there-"

"I said hi to you in the hallway the other day, and you completely ignored me!"

Connor opened his hands, palm-up. "Okay, Jesus, I'm a bastard. How often do I have to say I'm sorry?"

Connor’s hands were trembling. When Alana frowned at this, Connor quickly balled them into fists again and stuffed them in his pockets.

Alana softened a little. "I heard you were in a hospital for a while? How are you doing?"

Connor gritted his teeth. "Getting better every day. Anyway, would love to chat, but Evan and I need to get going-"

"Oh, of course, I just need to get into the closet."

Connor stepped out of the way, seemingly eager to leave the room, but Evan thought to ask, "...What are you getting from there?"

"Just some money for the newspaper," Alana said, and the hair on the back of Evan's neck stood up. "We're all working on signs for the fundraiser, but everyone's getting kind of worn out, so I thought I'd buy some chips and soda for the staff - actually, I should ask you, do you know where Jared is? He was supposed to be leading all this, but he's not picking up his phone."

"He's - uh - dealing with some personal stuff - an emergency - but I'm sure he'll get back to you as soon as he can..." Evan dug into his pockets and took out a twenty. "Actually - use this to buy drinks for everyone - consider it a donation."

Alana's eyes widened, and for a second Evan felt guilty. She thought he was making a generous donation, when really he was just giving the newspaper its own money. "Are you sure?"

"Yes," Evan said. "...Jared really wishes he could be here. He'd definitely rather be here than where he is."

"Evan?" Connor pointed at the door with his thumb.

"Right – Alana, could you maybe not tell anyone you saw us…?"

Connor had already left the classroom. The door shut behind him. Evan was anxious to follow, until Alana said, "Wait – I read the poems you gave me."

There was something urgent in Alana’s tone. "Really? Were they okay?"

“Evan,” she said, "They're all about death. They're all about pain and wanting to die. It was really worrying. I think I should tell a teacher."

"No!"

Alana seemed startled by his reaction. He hastened to think of an explanation. “Just because he wrote it doesn't mean he feels it, you know? It could be fictional – and besides, don’t poems have more than one meaning? You can’t say they’re about just one thing…”

Alana clearly wasn’t buying it. “He gave them to you to read, so obviously he wanted you to know. I think it's a cry for help.”

“Just wait a day or two, okay? Let me talk to him. It'd be really dumb if you told the teachers over nothing.”

“Fine. But I think if he trusts you to read his poems, he's trusting you to help.”

Evan left her. He hurried down the classroom’s ramp, where Connor was waiting for him.

Evan had noticed the poems were dark. He didn’t think they were suicidal. _Poets exaggerate_. _You’re not supposed to take them literally. And Connor’s over that now_ , Evan told himself. _He’s trying to get better. He doesn’t want to die anymore_.    

Evan wasn’t going to ask Connor anything. He couldn’t ask even if he’d wanted to: he wasn’t supposed to have seen the poems in the first place.

They got into Evan’s car. As they were pulling out of the parking lot, Connor finally asked, “So…what happened to Jared, exactly?” 

Evan had been so frazzled he hadn’t even realized: he hadn’t explained the situation to Connor yet. For just a second, he marvelled that Connor had willingly broke into a classroom for him, without even asking why.   

He explained what had happened. He expected Connor feel some sympathy for Jared. Instead, Connor laughed.

“Yeah, right,” Connor said. “He’s not in a jail cell. They’re not allowed to keep minors in with the adults. I know that station. He’s locked in their break room, and they want him out as badly as you do, ‘cuz he’s blocking their access to doughnuts.”   

“But – the family’s pressing charges–”

“No, they’re not. They can’t. Regular people can't press charges. They can file a police report, and the district attorney can press charges. Which she won't, 'cuz he’s a dumbass kid who's never been in trouble before. They’re just trying to make this a come-to-Jesus moment for him,” he said. “Even the bail’s just theater. Of course he can pay his own bail, and it doesn’t need to be in cash.”

“But they said he couldn’t!”

Connor rolled his eyes. “The police are allowed to lie to you, dude. They’re trying to force him to call his family. Little did they know – Evan Hansen’s coming to the rescue.”   

Evan was annoyed.

He knew he should’ve been grateful that Jared (probably) wasn’t going to jail after all. But Jared was scared. Evan had been scared. All over – nothing. Just because Marty’s family felt vindictive.  

Connor started, “The only way he’d get in real trouble is if…”

Evan glanced at him. “What?”

Connor paused, then shook his head. “Nah. Won’t happen. It was all junk in that unit.”

The police station was way over on the south side of town, by the old shopping district and the big downtown multiplex. Evan didn’t go to this part of town often. He took a few wrong turns and had to loop around one-way streets, feeling guilty about making Jared wait. In the meantime Connor was sinking lower and lower in his seat. Evan thought he just didn’t want to be seen near the police station, but when he looked at Connor, he noticed he had a fine sheen of sweat on his forehead. Connor’s breathing was very controlled. Like he was consciously pacing himself.  

“Are you okay?”

“Just…riding it out,” he said. He grinned painfully. “Glad I bought a downer after all.”

A few things Evan had mentally back-burnered slowly crawled to the front. He remembered: _He said he might’ve bought something I wouldn’t want him to buy. Something to bring him down afterwards_ …

It clicked into place. “Connor – don’t tell me you – you have a DUI, and you’re on probation, and you still bought – _weed_?”

“Man,” Connor sighed. “Everyone notices when I do something wrong. No one remembers when I do something right. 'Oh no, Connor still smokes!' How about, 'Connor hasn't blown up at his family in weeks.' 'Connor's actually making an effort in his classes.' 'Connor used to have risky sex, and now he's not having sex of any description.' I'm living like a monk, and I want credit for it.” 

“…I feel like that last one isn't your choice.”

“Hey, I'm choosing to stick with a guy who won't put out. That's a choice.”

By now Evan was so exasperated, he could think of nothing to say.

They’d arrived at the police station. Evan parked by the curb two blocks away, leaving Connor in the car.

Evan had never been inside a police station before. He didn’t know what to expect – but the whole process ended up being like a visit to the post office. The front lobby looked just like a regular office, except with more police officers coming in or out. He could hear phones ringing and printers whirring behind a Plexiglass partition.  

Evan asked after Jared at the front desk. The receptionist typed something on his keyboard, asked Evan if he knew Jared’s parents, then made a phone call. Evan didn’t understand the phone conversation, at least not from hearing one end of it – something about Jared’s case being transferred to “a prosecuting agency.” Then the receptionist had Evan sign a piece of paper (Evan barely read it; it looked like a contract of some kind) and wait in one of the lobby’s plastic chairs.

In a few minutes Jared appeared, escorted by a police officer. For some reason Evan had expected Jared to look small and scared. Maybe he’d even wear handcuffs. But Jared’s hands were free, and instead of scared he just looked deeply, deeply annoyed.

“Are you okay?” Evan asked once they were outside.

“I’m _fine_. I can’t believe I have to deal with all this shi…aw, what the hell!” 

Evan turned to where Jared was looking – at Evan’s car.

Jared asked, “Why is _he_ here?”

Connor had his window rolled down and his shoes on the dashboard. He looked even paler than before, but he was well enough to say, “Hey, Kleinman. I think my exact words were, ‘If you can't prove they agreed to this, it could bite you in the ass later.’ Because people are shit. Can I say I told you so?”

“Whatever.” Jared said to Evan, “Just drive me home.”

“Please,” Connor said.

“What?”

“Say ‘please’ to Evan. And ‘thank you.’”

Jared looked like he was about to say something much less polite, so Evan interrupted. “Don’t fight, you guys. Jared, just – get in the back.”  

They had a long, sulky ride to Jared’s house. Jared was sullen. Connor just looked sick. Evan didn’t know what to do with either of them.

When they finally reached the Kleinmans’, Connor said, “Hey – I need some water.”

“Hell no! I’m not letting you in my house.”

“He helped,” Evan said. “Without him, I couldn’t get the bail money.”

Jared returned Connor’s glare, but Evan’s testimonial, or maybe just the fact that Connor looked undeniably unwell, finally convinced him to relent. “Fine. You can wait in the garage.”

All three got out. Jared entered the pass code to the garage (shielding the keypad from Connor’s view with his hand) and disappeared into house.   

Connor sat heavily on a folding chair. Evan saw Jared had been hard at work: on a workbench, along with several dirty rags and a bottle of glass cleaner, were the best glass pieces from the storage unit that Jared had kept to sell. Delicate crystal ornaments and blown glass tumblers all threw colored lights on the concrete floor.

Jared came back out with a bottle of water, which Connor sucked down greedily. Jared gave him a side glance in disgust. 

“So what happens now?” Evan asked.

“I don’t know. They said I had to come back with my parents. That the case was ‘pending.’”

“Connor says they might just let you off…since you haven’t been in trouble before…”

They both looked at Connor. Connor twisted the cap back on his bottle.

“Okay, caveat – I am not a lawyer. I’m just a kid who’s been in trouble…a lot. But no cop’s gonna waste his time for a bunch of junk. You’re not worth the paperwork.”  

Evan relaxed, until he looked at Jared, who looked, if anything, more worried.

“…What if it wasn’t junk?” Jared asked.

Connor seemed to choose his words carefully. “Even if was, like, a few hundred dollars, it’d just be a misdemeanor. You’d get probation. Probably.”

“What if it was…more than that?”

 _What else was in the unit?_ Evan remembered furniture. Glass, obviously. Molded-over books and photographs. And– 

Connor apparently remembered at the same time. "How much were those records worth?"

Jared hesitated for a long, long moment. Finally he said, "Two thousand."

"WHAT?!" 

Connor jumped out of his chair. 

"At least, when I got them appraised-"

"You took  _two thousand dollars_ ' worth of property? That's a fucking  _felony_."

"But we didn't steal it! They just told the cops I-"

"That's all that matters! Even if the DA drops the charge, they can still sue you. They can nail your ass in civil court. It'll be a he-said, she-said situation, and guess what? When it's a minor versus an adult, judges always side with the adult. You need a lawyer."

"We can't afford a lawyer right now!" Jared said. "My parents just got the ER bill, it'll wipe out their emergency fund, so I can't tell-"

"There’s no ‘can’t’ here! You need a lawyer anytime between 'now' and 'right the hell now'!"

"I'm  _telling_  you, we can't aff-"

Connor suddenly kicked over the table. 

All the glass Jared had cleaned - all the sculptures, all the ornaments - went crashing to the floor. The shards sparked up and scattered like a breaking wave. Jared had to lift up an arm to shield his eyes.

"What the hell!"

"You're not  _listening_!" Connor said. "Fuck your bills! Fuck your budget! And fuck your dignity! If they press charges, you're not going to college, you're going to prison!"

"Jared-" Evan tried to interject, but Jared cut him off.

"You don't know what it's like!" Jared said. "You should've been expelled ten times over already, but your parents always buy your way out of it! Well guess what, not all of us have a fucking trust fund, and a lawyer dad who's buddies with the judge!"

"Don't bring up my dad-"

"I looked up that fancy hospital you went to," Jared said. "It's a thousand dollars a  _day_. You know what I would do, if I cost my parents that much? If I kept hurting them like you do? I would  _kill myself,_  because I'd be a useless waste of space!"

Connor turned and walked out of the garage. 

Evan was about to follow him, until Jared said, "Don't go."

This surprised him so much that Evan stopped and turned around. Jared's face was white, but his right arm was dotted with bright red drops of blood. He’d been nicked by the flying glass.

Evan said, "I have to go. I'm his ride."

"Fuck that. There's a bus stop around the corner. He can find his own way home."

"But-"

"You know what guys like Connor do? He'll make you think it's you and him against the world, when it's  _not_. If he takes it out on chairs, or tables, how long till he takes it out on you?"

"I can't just leave him," Evan said. He could feel his stomach twisting into knots. "When you care about someone - even when it's hard - you stick it out. You stay. You don't leave," he repeated, almost to himself. "You don't leave."

"You don't even know what’s the worst thing he's ever done."

"Because it doesn't matter."

"Because you're scared to ask," Jared spat out. "If you look too close you'll find out he's not some broken bird, he's an asshole who's burned everyone who's ever liked him. And you know it."

"I'm going," Evan said.

He didn’t turn back, but he still heard Jared say behind him, "I'd rethink this whole gay thing if I were you. You have terrible taste in men."

To Evan’s surprise, Connor was far past the car. He’d wandered to the end of the street, right by a fence and a holly bush. Evan jogged to catch up to him.

“Connor?”

Connor didn’t seem to hear him. Evan arrived at his side and took his hand. It was cold and clammy.

Following some instinct, Evan gripped Connor’s thin wrist and felt his pulse. “Your heart – it’s going at like a million miles an hour.”

“Yeah,” Connor said, and to Evan’s surprise, tugged the hairtie off of Evan’s wrist. He tied back his own hair – quickly, but clumsily – and then stumbled to his knees.

Evan reached for him – until Connor started to throw up.

The only decent thing to do was look away. It seemed to take a long time. Connor was vomiting everything he’d swallowed that morning, right down to the roots of his guts.

When Connor was finally finished, and after he’d rinsed with the water Jared had mercifully given him, Evan helped him stand up. They only made it twenty feet before he staggered down again. Evan sat down by the desecrated holly, and Connor leaned against him, taking in big gulps of air.  

“Should I take you to the–”

“No,” Connor said. “I just need to…sit down.”

Evan heard birds twittering above them. A distant leaf blower. Dry leaves shivering in the wind. He wondered if Connor was cold, and wrapped an arm around him.  

“Hey,” Connor said after a long moment. “I didn’t show you the sketch I made.” He retrieved the folded sheet from his pocket and handed it to Evan.

Evan had expected a regular head-and-shoulders sketch. Instead, it took a moment for him to realize he was even in the picture.

Connor had drawn a fantastical forest (or fantastical to Evan, at least). The trees were all the wrong size, and most of the species couldn’t live together. Still he recognized them all. He had told Connor about all of them: aspens and willow oaks and bristlecone pines. Sequoias, locust trees, and apple trees, each one rendered with obsessive, drug-induced attention to detail.

Off to the right side of the drawing, dwarfed by all the enormous trees, a small figure knelt on the ground. Evan recognized his own haircut. His hands were cupped around a tiny sapling, just beginning to sprout from the ground.   

“This is me?” he asked.

Connor looked at the drawing, then shut his eyes, still resting against Evan’s shoulder. “Yeah,” he said. “You take care of things.”

Evan laid his head against Connor’s. He’d always assumed Connor merely tolerated his nerding out over trees, but apparently Connor had done more than just put up with him. He was paying attention.   

Evan didn’t understand him – how someone could be so many things at once. Both vulgar and innocent, confident and insecure. So violent and so tender. So wise, so foolish.

Connor said, “I feel like it’s us against the world,” and a chill trickled down Evan’s spine.


	8. Chapter 8

It turned out that all Connor wanted to do was lie down and be held – so Evan drove them back to the Murphys’ empty house. Connor lay down in bed after cleaning up a little. Evan held him, but didn’t press up against him, afraid of having an…inappropriate reaction…while Connor still felt sick.     

Lying down, feeling Connor shift and settle next to him, Evan had plenty of time to think.

He worried about Jared, a little. Mostly he was surprised by how little he cared. He’d made a choice by leaving the garage, and didn’t regret it.

In the decade they had known each other, Jared had been sometimes mean, sometimes kind, but mostly merely tolerant, regarding Evan as something like a least favorite cousin. Jared was loyal. That much was true. His umbrella of familial loyalty just barely covered Evan. But that was about the extent of it. There was concern, and maybe pity, but not much warmth or affection. If Jared couldn’t even call himself Evan’s “friend,” without qualifiers – if he could be so cruel to someone who _was_ Evan’s friend, and had only wanted to help, and was sick besides – then Evan felt no obligation to him anymore. Jared’s problems weren’t his. Evan could hold his family friend at the same distance that Jared had always held him.

 _I’m done with you, Jared_ , he thought, and tried to feel relieved. Or angry. Or anything at all. Instead he just felt tired, and a little sad.

Connor’s phone rang.  

Connor groaned into his mattress. “Who is it?”

Evan let go of him and turned around. He picked Connor’s phone off of the nightstand. “It’s your mom. Do you want to answer?”

“No.”

The call ended while Evan held the phone. Then it buzzed again. Connor’s mom had left a voice message.

“God, why doesn’t she just text. Could you see what she said?”

“You’re going to give me your passcode?”

Connor said nothing for a second. Then he exhaled. “Sure. Why not. I look through your phone all the time.”

 _Yeah, at all my majestic tree pictures_. Evan smiled. “What about your burner phone?”

“No.”

Evan had been joking. He didn’t actually want to look through Connor’s secret flip phone. But that flat “no” still stung a little. He was still locked out of some parts of Connor’s life.

Connor told him the code. Evan got past the lock screen. He noticed the phone’s wallpaper was a page of yellowing sheet music. He couldn’t read music, but it looked terribly complex.

“Lil Buttmunch” had sent a text message (“Don’t forget! Civic Center! Thursday!”). Evan tapped into Connor’s voicemail and listened.   

“Your mom’s getting Thai for dinner…she wants to know what you want…she says you’ll have to wait at your psychiatrist’s? She’s helping the band kids?”

“Oh,” Connor said. “Not today. There’s some fuck-up with scheduling, so I’ll need to hang out there after my appointment this week.” He sighed. “Missed last week. Can’t miss this week.”

He wondered why Connor had missed last week’s appointment with his psychiatrist, then remembered: Connor had skipped out to take him and Jared to an abandoned building. He wondered what excuse Connor had given to his parents last week, then decided he didn’t want to know.

“I could pick you up.”

“Really?”

“Yeah, I mean, it just depends on the…”

Evan thought: they’d hardly seen each other over the last few days. They could make up for lost time. Tomorrow was Connor’s last day of suspension. They could celebrate that. And maybe they could finally go on a–   

“…date,” he finished, and blushed. “If it’s a day when I can use my mom’s car.”

Connor told him it was two days from now. He said it sounded like his parents would be home soon, so he understood if Evan wanted to leave and avoid a family dinner (as usual). He said maybe they could meet for a few minutes before school tomorrow, since they’d miss each other completely otherwise. Then he added, with a hand sliding up Evan’s back, that they still had at least twenty minutes alone…  

Alone in his own bed that night, nursing a new hickey beneath his collarbone, Evan reflected that it might be easier to sleep with Connor next to him. Night was when his mind went in circles. Embarrassing moments he’d nearly forgotten would jump to the front of his thoughts, as fresh as when they first happened, and the quiet, familiar lies would begin. _No one likes you. Not really. Not for who you are. You’ve always been alone. You’ll always be alone. You’ll die alone_.     

He didn’t think like this when he was with Connor. He could concentrate on how Connor fit next to him – on how Connor trusted him – and block out the voices in his head. He was still alone. But longing for someone was somehow a sharper, better loneliness than longing for no one in particular.    

He stroked his bruises with his thumb, taking comfort in the pain, until he fell asleep.

***

Connor was waiting for him at school the next morning, as they’d agreed. Just ten minutes before Evan had to go to homeroom and Connor returned to the I.S.S. classroom for his last day of suspension.

They met behind the gymnasium, held hands, and talked about nothing. Evan told him he was dreading a visit to a farm that Sunday.

“Really? I thought you were totally into nature and shit.”

“I like _nature_ , not…cornhole and face painting.” Evan looked at him. “You don’t believe me.”

“Do I look like I don't believe you? This is my ‘believing you’ face.”

“You think I like fall festivals?”

“I don’t know. It seems very ‘dad.’ If I had to guess that one of our classmates was really into ‘dad’ stuff – I’d guess you. Since you’re…you know…”

“Lame.”

“I was going to say ‘wholesome,’” Connor said with mock offense. “Though, fine, maybe last year I thought you were lame.”

“What made you change your mind?”

Connor smirked. “Who says I did?”

“Jerk.”

“Nerd.”

Connor kissed him just as the five-minute warning bell rang.

They let go and walked back to the main school building, past the parking lot. Evan was about to ask what other things counted as ‘dad’ activities when he saw that Connor had stopped short.

"Shit!"

"What?"

"It's my probation officer!" 

While Connor rifled through his bag, Evan glanced over to where Connor had looked. He didn’t see any adults – other than the usual teachers and staff – but he did see a red Mazda sedan in one of the Visitor parking spaces. He hadn't known probation officers drove plain, unmarked cars. Were probation officers also police officers? Did they have guns?

“Why is he here? Does he like, check on you randomly?” Evan wasn’t sure, but he thought he remembered that being part of the court order.

Connor found what he was looking for. "You have to hide my stash."

Evan snapped to attention. " _What_?"

Connor was holding out a small, mint green Zip-loc bag, about the size of Evan's palm. "He's gonna search me. You need to hide this."

This must’ve been what Connor had bought yesterday – or at least part of it. _Oh crap. Oh God!_ "Why do you have it  _on_  you?"

Connor ignored the question. "If you don't, he'll think I'm violating my probation."

"But you  _are_  violating your probation!"

Evan hadn't reached out for the bag – hadn't fully processed the stupidity of  _bringing drugs to school_. What the hell was Connor thinking?

Connor looked at him. Then his eyes darkened, and narrowed. "Are you saying you won't do this for me?"

The situation's severity dropped on Evan like a curtain. He didn't want Connor to get caught. He didn't want Connor to be angry with him. He would do almost anything to keep Connor from going to court again. But he also didn’t want to commit the stupid, illegal, stupid, expellable, and stupid offense of bringing drugs on campus.

Evan faltered. "I...no, I'm not saying that. I just–"

"Good." Connor stuffed the bag into Evan's hand. "I’ll take it back at lunch – usual place – I’ll tell them, I don’t know, that I need to use the bathroom or something–"

"What am I supposed to do with this?" Evan asked. "What if – what if they have drug-sniffing dogs, or–"

"Don't overthink it!" Connor said, swinging his messenger bag on. "They won't search  _you_ _!_ "

Connor scampered off – maybe to clear his locker of some other contraband before his probation officer could get to it. Evan was left with a very small, very illegal bag in his hand.

He didn't know what to do with it. Keep it in his pocket? His locker? His desk? Hide it on campus somewhere, hope no one found it, and pretend he’d never seen it before if someone did? He had to be in homeroom in a few minutes – there were probably tons of secret crannies in the school, but Evan didn’t have time to look for one. What if Connor was wrong? What if they did search him? The admins knew they were friends now.

Evan had never seen or touched drugs in his life, and now Connor had just dumped it on him - assuming he'd take the risk, or the fall, without even asking first. Connor wasn't supposed to be doing drugs in the first place. It was exactly what the judge had ordered him  _not_  to do. And Evan had to cover for his idiocy.

…Or not. 

What if, instead of hiding it, Evan simply - got rid of it?

 _He shouldn't have this_ , Evan thought. The idea started to grow.  _It's bad for him. It could get him in trouble. It could get_ me _in trouble. So really the best thing to do is_...

Destroy it. 

He slid the bag into his pocket. Something inside crunched, like dry herbs. 

Evan walked to the men's room.

The restroom was empty. Evan thought about simply dropping the bag into a toilet, but he wasn't sure the toilet could take the full bag. Better to empty it first. But what would he do with the bag after? Leave it in a wastebasket? What if a dog sniffed it out? What if they found the bag and powdered it for fingerprints?

Evan had no idea if any of these things were remotely likely. Everything he knew about marijuana (this was marijuana, right?) came from movies and the drug PSAs they screened at school.  

He decided to take a bunch of paper towels from the dispenser. 

He locked himself in a stall - unzipped the bag - and sprinkled the leaves in the toilet. It looked exactly like oregano. There wasn't much in the bag after all - not that Evan knew how much was a lot or a little, when it came to weed. 

Then he wiped the bag with the paper towels, dumped it all in the toilet, and flushed. 

For three whole seconds, he was gratified to watch everything swirl down into the plumbing. The water thundered down. 

Then slowed.

Then...stopped.

The water was just an inch or two from the seat. The bowl wasn't draining. 

Evan started to panic.

Had he included too many towels? Was the plastic caught on something? What was he supposed to do? 

He pushed the handle down again, hoping to God the blockage would clear itself. This time - please - the water would drain, and it would all disappear.

Instead the toilet gurgled. Water rushed down. And then - instead of draining - it filled the bowl, cascaded over the seat, and splashed onto the tile floor in a gushing wave.

_Oh no!_

Evan banged the stall door open in his rush to get out and keep his sneakers from getting wet. The water kept coming. The toilet was overflowing like a fountain.

Evan dashed out of the restroom. There was still a tiny hope in him that the hallway would be empty, and he could just walk away as if he had nothing to do with the flood in the stall – but no. Plenty of students were in the hallway, hurrying to homeroom before the late bell rang. And not only students. There was also, of all people, the  _vice principal._ She was apparently on her way to her office. 

"Oh, Evan!" Vice Principal Vanetti said, in a surprised, how-nice-to-see-you greeting, until she saw his face. And the water seeping out from beneath the door to the men's room. The smile on her face faded. Students in the hall were stopping to stare at the quickly-forming puddle.

"What happened?" she asked Evan.

Others were watching - listening. He had to explain himself, but he couldn't tell her the truth. What could he possibly say? 

"I..." he began. He swallowed, struggled, and finally, failed. "I…just took a really huge dump."

***

“… _and the men’s room on the first floor of the E building is temporarily out of order_.”

That was included in the daily announcements, and Evan wanted to die.

Going to his classes meant passing by the first floor between periods. Once, he saw a yellow “CAUTION: WET FLOOR” sign standing outside the restroom. On his second pass, he saw a custodian wheel a motorized drain snake down the hall.

And he heard students talking. 

“Dude, some guy’s ass broke the first-floor restroom!” one classmate said to another during AP U.S. History. Evan shrank down in his seat. “And those toilets can take a beating. I mean they handled the Great Fajita Disaster of sophomore year, so that shit must've been truly _epic_.”

“Does anyone know who it was?”

“Nah. Maybe some freshman kid? I don’t think anyone recognized him.”

Maybe there were benefits to always being that forgettable loser in the background.

Besides his mortification over possibly being recognized, and his guilt over taking the custodians’ time, and his embarrassment over inconveniencing every boy who just wanted to use the bathroom during the seven minutes between periods, he was also deeply annoyed with Connor. The more he thought about how Connor had foisted the bag on him, the more annoyed he became. By the time lunch came around he was in a fine state of irritation.

Evan waited for Connor in their usual spot: by the row of trees past the track field. Even locked in the I.S.S. classroom, Connor must’ve heard the morning announcements. He might have put the pieces together and realized what had happened to his stash. Evan half-suspected he wouldn’t show up at all.

But he did. When Evan looked up from the book he was reading, Connor was walking towards him. 

“Hey,” Connor said when he reached him. “You don’t – need to tell me you got rid of it. I know.”

Evan was still annoyed, but some of his indignation melted at seeing Connor in person. Connor looked…sheepish. That wasn’t a usual look for him. “Why did you bring it to school?” Evan asked.

Connor sighed. “How often do people ask you for that bookmark?”

Evan looked at the bookmark in his hand. He’d gotten it for free from the public library. “Never.”

“You just keep it in your backpack? No one’s ever gone through your bag? Looked for it? Asked for it?”

“No,” Evan said. _What are you getting at?_ “No one’s ever touched my bag.”

“Exactly,” Connor said. “Ninety percent of the time – no goes through your stuff. You can bring anything on campus. It’s safe. Today was just one of the ten percent. I wanted it for after school,” he explained. “Couldn’t go back home between now and then. That’s all.”

It’d been a risk, but a calculated risk. It was still insanely stupid though. “Don’t ever ask me to hide your drugs again,” Evan said.

“Okay,” he said. Then, “And if they call you in…stick with what you told Vanetti. Don’t say anything. They’ll trust you.”

 _What?_ How did Connor know about his short conversation with Ms. Vanetti? “What are you talking about?” 

“You’re getting excited. Relax. They won’t come for you. I got called in–”

“Why?”

“Because they found a bag when they cleared the toilet. And apparently, it’s not the first bag like that they’ve found on campus – see, I’m not the only dumbass at school. But I’m the one with the biggest file. So they called me, and talked to me, but I threw off the scent. You’re fine.” 

“What do you mean, you ‘threw off the scent’?”

Connor didn’t answer right away. Evan closed his book. Something between fear and anger was crawling up his scalp, like a slow pulse of electricity. “You did something, and you’re not telling me.”

“You can look through my burner phone,” Connor said suddenly. “You asked to before.”  

If Evan hadn’t wanted to look through his phone yesterday, he definitely didn’t want to now. He had a tingling suspicion that he’d learn something he wouldn’t like. But when Connor handed the flip phone over, he couldn’t refuse. He opened it.

The phone didn’t have a lock screen, of course. Evan absentmindedly touched the Messages icon before remembering that wouldn’t work. He had to navigate using the keypad.

There were no names saved in the Contacts, only nicknames like “Laser” or “Bad Mr. Frosty.” The most recent messages – sent just a few minutes ago – were from “Spawn.” Evan didn’t have to guess twice to know who that was.

He read:

\---

 **Pete:** WTF

 **Pete:** Y the fuck did u bring my shit here

 **Pete:** I’m nice 2 u,  & this is how u treat me?

 **Connor:** Sorry. Priorities.

 **Pete:** F U

 **Pete:** Now the admins up my ass

 **Pete:** I can get u expelled

 **Pete:** I can tell tehm abt the closet

 **Connor:** Really? How about this: you run to the admins, and I'll tell your dad you like sucking dick.

 **Connor:** You can't prove I hit you, but I still have your whiny-ass texts begging me to come back. Maybe I'll get expelled, but you'll be on the street. Assuming your dad doesn't kill you first.

 **Connor:** Don't fuck with me, kid.

\---

Evan looked up at Connor. His hands felt cold.

“I mean,” Connor said, as if they’d been talking, “Pete wouldn’t have sold to me yesterday if you hadn’t smoothed the way, so…thanks for that.”

Evan gave him the phone back. “You told the staff he was selling drugs? You said the Zip-loc bags were all his?”

“I heavily implied. Probably the staff won’t get anything solid on him either, so he’ll be fi…” Connor trailed off at Evan’s aghast expression. “Look, man, I had to throw someone under the bus, and it wasn’t going to be you.”

“You basically threatened to have him killed!”

“He literally punched you in the face! How am I the bad guy here?”

“Because – because…” Evan had to gather his scattered thoughts. This was like breaking a boy’s jaw because he’d hit a friend. Like totaling someone’s car because he’d wrecked a snowman. “It’s not fair. It’s not even. You can’t out a person like that. He – he liked you, once.”

“I won’t _actually_ tell his dad,” Connor said. “Threaten to, sure, if it’ll keep him quiet. But I don’t actually want Pete _dead_. I’m not a murderer. I don’t even have his texts saved.”

Evan couldn’t be sure if Connor always intended to keep Pete’s secret, or if he’d just decided to a second ago after seeing Evan’s reaction. He couldn’t be sure Connor had really deleted Pete’s old texts. And that bothered him. “You need to stop this. No more drugs. No more threatening people. No more hurting yourself. You can do it. I mean, you don’t think about suicide anymore, so I know you can stop–”    

Connor laughed.

It was one of the coldest laughs Evan had ever heard. The chill in Evan’s hands seemed to travel up to his heart, which began to beat slow and hard, struggling against the cold. “You…do…think about suicide?”

“Newsflash, I've thought about it every damn day. For years. Hell, I remember being twelve and jealous of kids with cancer, because no one blames them for being sick. No one tells them 'You didn't try hard enough' or 'You're just an asshole.' And some of them get to die. And most of them get to meet John Cena, apparently. It's like being an alcoholic. I'm dry now, but I still want to. I'll always want to.” 

“Always?”

“I can't imagine what it feels like to want to live,” he said, lightly, like it was the punchline to a joke.

Evan didn’t know what to say. He was speechless.

Connor checked the time on his phone. “Shit. I’ve been out five minutes already. Have to go back to suspension.”

Evan remembered: Connor was using a restroom break to see him during lunch, since the I.S.S. kids weren’t supposed to leave the classroom otherwise. He still didn’t know what to say. “Connor–”

“Don’t tell anyone what I just told you.  Okay? I’d rather manage it – at my own pace.”

Evan didn’t nod. He said nothing.

Connor searched his face. “Hey. Promise me.”

“I…” He couldn’t – or he didn’t want – to get the words out. But Connor was looking at him expectantly. Frowning.

Evan gave in. He said clearly, carefully, “I promise I won’t tell the staff what you told me.”

“Okay,” Connor said. Then, to Evan’s surprise, he bent down and kissed him quickly on the cheek. “Bye.”

As Connor ran back to the main building, Evan touched the spot where Connor had kissed him. He thought he understood Connor. He was wrong.

Once upon a time – four months ago – Evan had wanted to die. Or more correctly, he wanted to stop existing. At that moment, on that branch, it seemed easier to stop fighting. Stop worrying. Fall. But his desire had been a passing impulse. When he hit the ground and realized he hadn't died – and that no one was coming to find him – and after a hot wave of despair and self-loathing had washed over him ( _You can't even do this right_ ) – his first thought wasn't to try again. It was to struggle to his feet, limp over to where his boss was, and ask for a ride to the hospital. 

He'd assumed that Connor's thoughts of suicide were like his own. Fleeting. A throb of pain he could ride out with a clenched fist and a sucked-in breath. Death was for those who were brave enough to die, and Evan was a coward. ( _You just fell from a tree_ , he had taunted himself then, on the ride to the emergency room.  _If you really wanted it, you could have taken a razor...or a rope...but you weren't serious. You never even wanted to die. You just wanted the pain to stop_.)

Now he realized that Connor's thoughts were of a different kind. Not just a passing fantasy, but a recurring need, as certain and persistent as hunger. The way that Evan had felt at his worst was how Connor felt almost every day.

On one hand – his heart went out to him. Evan wanted to live. (He knew that now.) To wake up every morning without that desire was unimaginable to him. Connor was fighting against his own mind every single day. And still going to school. And being good to Evan. And keeping a rigid self-control around vindictive teachers, and estranged family members, and all the ignorance and cruelty of their classmates. Sometimes he failed, but he was trying so hard – a battle unseen, and unappreciated. He was so much stronger than Evan had guessed.

On the other hand…he was afraid.

Connor was getting more help now than ever before, but it didn’t seem to be enough – not if he was still thinking of dying every day. Not if he was taking huge, stupid risks to numb himself with pot. Evan didn’t think the staff knew how bad it was. _He_ hadn’t known how bad it was, and he talked to Connor every day. What if they lost him? What if Connor lost the fight one day – and no one was there to save him? They’d come so close to losing him last month…

Evan made a decision.

As soon as seventh period was over, he went to the newspaper classroom. The room was almost empty when he opened the door, except for the teacher and two students, including Alana. She was hunched over a keyboard. She frowned at her computer screen, but smiled in surprise when Evan tapped her shoulder.   

“Hey, Evan!”

“Hi. Are you…editing an article?” He wasn’t sure how to launch into what he wanted to talk about.

“Yes – it’s not a fluff piece, for once. Did you hear, last weekend some freshmen girls stole a substitute’s keys and broke into his car! Allegedly,” she added quickly. “I don’t know if they’ve been disciplined yet.”

“Wow. That’s…bad.” _Just spit it out, Evan. No stalling._ “I wanted to talk about Connor.”

The smile dropped off her face. “What is it?”

“I want you to tell the staff.” He took a breath. “Tell them – he still thinks about hurting himself.”


	9. Chapter 9

The next day after school, Evan made sandwiches at home. He brought salad, apples, grapes, and nuts: the Murphys had all gone vegetarian while Connor's mom experimented with Buddhism some years back, and while Connor wasn't a vegetarian anymore Evan had noticed he didn't eat much meat. He took silverware from home, thinking it'd be classier than their stockpile of takeout plastic forks. Evan and his mom didn't own cloth napkins, but he made sure the paper ones he brought didn't have fast food logos on them. Then he stacked it all up in the nicest reusable bag he could find (they didn't own a real picnic basket either) and loaded it into the trunk.

In short: Evan wanted his first date with Connor - his first date with anyone, ever - to be perfect. He hadn't actually asked Connor beforehand, but he was picking Connor up from his psychiatrist's office. They could just naturally segue into it. The surprise would be part of the perfection.

Connor's psychiatrist worked in one of the buildings of a large medical campus. It looked like a tiny private college: all ivy-covered brick and fading dogwood trees. When Evan pulled up, Connor was leaning against a bike rack, frowning at something on his phone. Evan had to wave to get his attention - then quickly wipe his hands on his pants. He was sweating.

Connor tossed something into the backseat before he opened the passenger side door. 

Evan said, "Hi."

Connor shut the door as he got in, hard. "Evan."

There was a definite coolness to the way he said Evan's name. "Hard day at therapy?"

"No. It was fine."

Connor was watching him. It was hard to read his expression. As Evan left the parking lot, he decided:  _Might as well. Now or never_. He launched into it. "So I was thinking...we haven't really gone out and done stuff on our own, since you're busy with therapy and community service and stuff, so like - there's a hill, or like a playground area, a few miles from here where you can see the whole town down below, and I, uh, packed some food, so I thought maybe we could go there and...watch the sunset..."

Evan trailed off. Connor hadn't stopped watching him the whole time, and his expression hadn't changed either. "Okay," Connor said. "I don't want to do that."

A pin pricked Evan's heart. He could feel it deflate inside of him. "...But...I already planned it..."

Now Connor finally looked somewhere else. He checked his phone. "I had another chat with Vice Principal Vanetti today."

"Again? Was it about yesterday?"

"No. In fact, she says she's worried about me." Connor said. He was completely - coldly - calm. "You see, I wrote some poems that she found ‘very troubling.’"

Evan could see the storm coming seconds before it hit. Board up the windows, sandbag the doors, hide in the cellar, and hope to God that somehow you'll survive.

He had told Alana to leave him and the poems out of it. Just drop a hint to the administration. Don't explain in detail. Apparently, she'd ignored his instructions.

"Anyone could have told her-"

"Motherfucker!" Connor said. "I know it was you! You're the only one who could've taken them!"

_Fine, no lying_. "I couldn't keep it to myself-"

"Do you know what you just did? She’s going to tell my family. And my probation officer. I might have to go to the psych ward again. I trusted you, and you went behind my back-"

"You said you think about killing yourself every day! If you ever hurt yourself-" 

"Then it would be _my choice_ ," Connor said. "It’s my life. I can do what I want with it. Hell – why are you even pretending to care?" he asked. "You steal from me, you break promises, you can't even keep a fucking secret, so why are you here? You don't trust me. You barely like me. You're not even using me for sex, so why-"

"What’s _wrong_ with you?!" Evan asked, and a second Connor stopped. "Are you seriously angry with me because I don't want you to die?"

Connor didn’t answer the question. Evan continued, "Okay, I took your poems. Because I wanted to help you. And I let the admins know about your thoughts - because I wanted to help. I was only thinking about you."

"I never gave you permission," Connor said. "I told you _not_ to."

“I know, but – I had to ignore it.” _For your safety. I couldn’t forgive myself, if I kept quiet and something happened to you_ …

Connor’s voice was as clear and cold as ice. “So I should just ignore you when you say ‘no,’ then?”

Evan flashed back to all those times, in his car or Connor’s bedroom, when he had told Connor “No.” He’d always trusted him to stop. He couldn’t believe Connor was threatening him this way.  

Fear gathered in his chest like roiling stormclouds, and he remembered what Jared had told him - that he never asked about Connor's past because he was scared to know. And all at once his fear turned into anger. A hot desire to lash out before Connor could make good on his threat.

"What's the worst thing you've ever done?" he demanded.

Connor retreated. "Why are you asking that now?"

"I want to know. What's the worst thing?"

A flicker of doubt crossed Connor's face. Then a wall went up. "I don't have to fucking tell you."

Evan abruptly turned the car to the road's shoulder and braked. The car lurched to a sudden stop. 

"Get out," Evan said. 

"What?"

"Get out and walk home." Evan could feel tears welling up inside even as he said it. 

There was nothing Connor could say to that. He got out. The moment he closed the door, Evan accelerated hard, leaving him on the shoulder. Evan didn't look back.

He wanted to cry, but knew he couldn't while driving. Tears already blurred his vision. He drove home, fighting down the growing sob in his chest, so that by the time he reached his street his lungs felt raw from suppressed cries.

_Why did you ever think you could do this? He's not healthy._ You’re _not healthy. And he's not your boyfriend_.

_This is how it'll be. It'll be you constantly talking him down from ledges, trying to be heard over the voices in his head. You can't win that fight._

_You were an idiot to ever think this could work_.

He reached his house. He parked in the garage. He took out all the things he'd packed in the trunk. Finally, he checked the backseat for whatever Connor had tossed there. 

He felt something crinkly. Packaging paper and cellophane. He turned on the interior light.

It was a small bouquet of yellow roses. Modest - probably bought from a grocery store. 

And not for him. 

_Oh_. 

***

The next morning, Evan raced to Zoe's locker before homeroom.

He had tried texting and calling Connor last night. Connor hadn't answered. He'd even tried driving back the way he'd came, but hadn't found Connor along the roadside. Maybe Connor knew some other way home. 

The bouquet had been meant for Zoe. Evan was positive about this.  He'd completely forgotten about Zoe's Thursday recital. He was supposed to bring Connor to the civic center yesterday, but instead he'd made him walk five miles home. And of course Connor would be too proud to call for help...if there was even anyone he could call.

_You weren’t even threatening me_. Evan had realized that as soon as he’d calmed down. Connor was trying to explain he felt violated, and Evan had just heard the words in the worst way. He’d been so wrong. Horribly, unforgivably wrong.

He'd wanted to help Connor, and instead he'd just messed everything up.

Now if he could just talk to Zoe - explain to her that it wasn't Connor's fault he'd missed her concert - maybe he could still make things right.

When Evan turned the corner, Zoe was adding books to her locker. She saw him coming, and Evan saw her face harden.

"Zoe!"

"Hi, Evan." Her voice was carefully neutral.

"You - uh - did you talk to Connor today? Did he tell you..."

"What you were up to yesterday? No. But I guess you guys were having fun, since he didn't come to my concert." She jammed a book into the tight space.

"No, it was my fault, I completely forgot-"

"Stop making excuses for him," she interrupted. "If it mattered to him,  _he_  would've remembered." She moved to slam her locker door shut, but at the last moment changed her mind and closed the door softly. "But I guess it didn't." 

She turned and walked away.

The bell rang. Evan wanted to run after her and explain, but it was already too late. 

He knew he would see Connor in English. There was no point in trying to call him again. But in the meantime guilt gathered in his chest like a filling cup, soft and relentless as drops of water. 

When morning classes ended Evan still headed over to the physics laboratory, but Connor wasn't there - he'd left already. It'd been a while since Evan had spent lunch alone. It'd also been a long time since he'd written a letter to himself, but he didn't know what else to do. He went to the computer lab. 

Nothing came.

After thirty minutes of alternately staring at a blank Word doc and browsing through different webcomics, Evan saw someone walk through the lab door. Someone so tall his head nearly reached the door frame.

It was Tim. 

Evan quickly trained his eyes back on his own screen, but Tim walked straight to him. "Hey."

This was the first word he'd spoken to Evan - ever, actually. "Hi?"

"I thought you'd want to know. Connor's hurt."

"What-?"

"Listen, he said some things to Pete, so I roughed him up, but I didn't want it to go this far. I feel bad. I thought you'd want to know," he repeated, "since you're friends, or whatever."

"Where is he?"

Tim told him. As Evan shoved his things into his bag and signed out, Tim added, "That dude's crazy, man. It's like he wanted me to hurt him."

_Whenever I want to hurt myself, I just pick a fight with someone bigger than me._

Evan ran out of the lab. Tim hadn't known where Connor was, exactly, but they'd been by the trackfield. Evan could guess where Connor had gone after that: behind the trees, by the fence bordering the school. 

When Evan arrived, the trackfield was deserted. He thought he might have to look elsewhere - until he saw the sole of a sneaker hiding behind a tree.

Evan approached quietly. Connor was curled up on the ground, nearly in a fetal position. He didn't look up when Evan reached him, but didn't resist when Evan knelt down, took his hand, and silently rolled up Connor's sleeve. 

Connor's arm was bruised. Evan pulled up his shirt slightly as well. Another, larger bruise was swelling on his side. There were maybe more that Evan couldn't see. Tim had been weirdly thoughtful. He hadn't hit Connor anywhere that Connor couldn't hide.

Evan lay down behind Connor and pulled him in. He placed a hand on Connor's chest. Even lying limp, Connor's heart had been racing, but now it began to slow, beat by beat. Evan kept his hand still, feeling Connor's heart tense, struggle, and finally rest under his palm like an injured bird. 

"I'm sorry," Evan whispered.

Connor's chest finally rose from a deep, steadying breath. He took Evan's hand in his.

"The roses are in my room, if you still want to give them to-"

"I had a psychotic break when I was fourteen," Connor said suddenly. His voice was low, and the words were deliberate. "It was like...it's hard to describe. It's like when zookeepers wear costumes so the animals can't tell they're not really pandas or cranes or whatever. Except I could tell. I thought my family wasn't my family. They were all demons wearing costumes. And while I was in it, I tried to kill Zoe."

Evan rested his forehead against Connor's neck. He held him a little tighter.

"I almost broke her door down. Probably would've managed it, if she didn't have so many locks. Our dad managed to take me down, eventually…think I gave him a few scars that night. Anyway. Went to the hospital. Came back to my senses. And right after I was released...I tried to kill myself. She's the one who found me."

"Why did you want to kill yourself?"

"Because no one could tell me it wouldn't happen again, and I wanted her to be safe," he said. Connor rose to sit against the tree, one leg flat against the ground. Evan shifted to a cross-legged position near him. Connor continued, "I didn't want to live anyway, so in my mind, it was noble. I didn't know it would fuck her up too. I mean...it's not like we were best friends before that. We hit each other a lot. Tried to drown her when I was five. Whatever. Sibling stuff. Murder was just the cherry on top of a shit sundae."

"You weren't in your right mind. And you were just a kid."

"Yeah," Connor said. "But so was she."

Evan knew – or took it for granted – that it was normal for siblings to terrorize each other. Still he tried to imagine being a thirteen-year-old girl, afraid her brother was going to literally kill her, with parents who couldn’t always keep her safe and never agreed on what to do. A brother who still threatened and stole from and cursed at her, even if he’d never tried to outright murder her again. If Evan had been the younger sibling here – would he have forgiven Connor? Would he understand it was Connor’s illness talking, and not Connor himself, while he was breaking down the door? Or would he write him off?

And yet…after all that, Zoe was still upset that Connor had skipped her concert. She had bought his favorite nail polish for him when he came home from the hospital. And Evan remembered the tears in her eyes when Connor had apologized – or pretended to apologize – to her on the porch last week. Sometimes love can feel like a wound that never heals. She had plastered it over with anger, fear, and pretended apathy, but Connor could still hurt her...because she hadn’t completely given up on him yet.     

If something you love hurts you, stop loving it. Then it can’t hurt you anymore. The Murphy siblings had learned the same lesson in different ways, and it had failed them both. They had never stopped loving, no matter how much they tried.

"So that's the worst thing I ever did." Connor smiled crookedly. "If you needed to know."

Evan still held Connor’s hand. _You are not the worst thing you’ve ever done_ , he thought, but didn’t know what to say.

“I think…” he started. “I think she hasn’t given up on you yet. So don’t give up on her. Keep trying.”

Connor sighed. “You would say that.”

“Because I’m ‘wholesome?’”

“Yeah. And ‘cuz you’re one of the braver guys I know.”

Evan laughed without meaning to. It came out like a hiccup. “What–? I'm scared of everything! Talking to girls. Talking to _boys._ Job interviews. Class presentations. Ordering food. Even – talking to cashiers, or waiters, or bus drivers.” 

Connor looked puzzled. “You've done all of those things.”

“I still do them, but I'm scared the whole time.”

Connor asked calmly, “And you don't think that's brave?”

Evan had never thought of it that way before.

_I still do it, but I'm always scared_ , or _I’m always scared…but I still do it_. A tiny shift in perspective.

Instead of replying, he took Connor’s hand and kissed his palm. The skin tasted like salt and the fresh smell of soil after rain.

Normally they were careful about being too affectionate at school, but when lunch ended Connor kept holding Evan's hand, only letting go once they were past the trackfield. Evan wouldn’t have minded if he’d never let go at all. They still hadn’t gone on a date, but Evan still felt a more-than-average bond. Like two quaking aspens: separate on the surface, but the same underneath.

***

A Facebook soliloquy.

**Jared Kleinman [10:43 PM]:** Hey.

**Jared Kleinman [10:44 PM]:** Still not talking to me, I see.

**Jared Kleinman [10:44 PM]:** Anyway my mom’s probably told your mom everything. The shit hit the fan pretty hard over here, but it could still be worse, I guess.

**Jared Kleinman [10:45 PM]:** I can tell you about it in a couple days.

**Jared Kleinman [10:45 PM]:** Or we could never talk about it again. That’s also an option.

**Jared Kleinman [10:45 PM]:** Guess I’ll leave you alone, if you want.

**Jared Kleinman [10:48 PM]:** Look, I’m

**Jared Kleinman [10:48 PM]:** s

**Jared Kleinman [10:49 PM]:** Seeing you Sunday. Yeah.

***

Evan had to admit: the De Jong Farm knew how to put on a harvest festival.

His opinions about cornhole and face painting remained unchanged. But there were worse ways to spend a Sunday evening than eating candied apples, and petting goats, and choosing a perfect pumpkin to carve into a jack-o'-lantern.

The best part was seeing Maisie – Jared’s little sister – and his mom get excited about the same things. They both wanted to go on the hay ride, and visit the craft shop, and agreed the alpaca was the nicest animal in the petting zoo. They were altogether on the same wavelength. It made Evan wonder if his mom would have preferred having a daughter, and the thought stung.

The worst part was avoiding Jared.

It wasn’t that difficult. It surprised Evan, in an almost regretful way, how easy it was – how similar to past outings, where Jared would give Evan the minimum amount of polite attention. This time Jared stuck by his little brother. Adam was twelve, could pass for ten, and was a quiet, introverted kid. If Jared ignored Evan to keep Adam company, he was just being an attentive brother.  

With his mom and Maisie getting along, and Jared and Adam often wandering off by themselves, Evan mostly had his own thoughts for company – until it was time to try the corn maze.

His mom wanted everyone to do the maze together. Even though there were dozens of other people in the maze – even though he could hear strangers talking and laughing several rows away – it still felt eerie in the middle of the maze. The dry stalks seemed to chatter amongst themselves in the evening breeze, rustling together under a pink-purple sky.    

He had plenty of time to notice this, as they all got miserably lost within twenty minutes.

Everyone deferred to Evan’s mom for a while. Then Adam suggested a route, which wasn’t any better. When they reached the same fork for what felt like the tenth time, Jared finally spoke up. 

Jared wanted to go right. Adam  wanted to go left. Finally, Evan's mom decided for them. "Fine, Adam'll be my buddy. We'll go right, you guys can go left, and we'll see who gets to the car first." Said with all the aplomb of a confident woman. 

Evan was pretty sure splitting up was how people got murdered - but he was also pretty sure right was the way out. He followed Jared while his mom and Adam disappeared down the other path.

Maisie had tired of walking, so she was riding piggyback on Jared, resting her head on his neck. If she wasn't asleep already, she would be soon. It was getting late.

"Do you have reception out here?" Jared asked. It was the first question he'd asked Evan all day.

Evan checked his phone. "A little."

"Mine's getting nothing. Probably should've made sure your mom could call us before we split. Oh well!"

It turned out right was the correct choice. In a few minutes they reached the end of the maze. When they got to the car, Maisie woke up and sleepily asked if they were leaving. 

"No, we have to wait for Aunt Heidi to get out," Jared said. 

"And Adam?"

"No, Adam lives here now. He's going to become one with the corn, and come back to tell us we're just niblets on the cob of the universe."

"...I think they're called kernels," Evan said.

"Niblets, kernels, aren't they the same thing?"

Evan wasn't sure. Maybe one was canned and one was fresh? He ended up debating this with Jared while Maisie played a game on Jared's phone.

The minutes passed slowly, and the sky started to darken.

"...They've been out there a while," Jared said, after a long silence. He was sitting on the car hood.

"Yeah."

"What happens when the place closes?"

"I think workers go out there with flashlights? They'll get out one way or another."

They were already well past the time they should've been home. Maisie was asleep in the backseat, curled up under Jared's  jacket.

"So..." Jared asked. "You're still seeing Connor?"

"Yes."

Jared fidgeted. Evan could tell he wanted to apologize, but couldn't get the words out. Jared wasn't used to it. Besides, Evan wasn't the person he needed to apologize to. 

Evan decided to take pity on him, and change the subject. "Did you tell your parents about…everything?"

“I didn’t have a choice,” he said. “They were – not happy. But they believed me. I thought I’d have to prove it, but they just trusted what I told them. That made a big difference.” He rubbed the back of his neck. “There’s just no way I can prove it to anyone else.”

“Marty’s family never sent you any texts? Or emails?”

“No,” Jared said, sounding slightly irritated. “They never wrote to me. We only ever talked at the temple.” He stopped, then repeated the words to himself, slowly, as if tasting them for the first time. “At…the…temple.”

He suddenly jumped off the car hood, arms flailing. “OH MY GOD!”

“What?!”

“I’m an idiot! I’m a goddamn idiot! Oh my God, I’m too dumb to live!” He started tapping desperately at his phone, bringing up a calendar. “What day is it?”

“It’s Sunday? The twenty-third?”

“Shit shit _shit_ ,” Jared said. “I’m a moron. I’m _boned_.”   

“Jared, what are you talking about?”

“I installed the security cameras!” Jared said. “Ages ago, when I volunteered at the temple! There’ll be footage of Marty’s son-in-law talking to me, and giving me a key – that’s all the proof I need!”

Evan was still horribly confused. “Isn’t that good news?”

“ _The footage resets every four weeks_ ,” Jared said. “After four weeks the storage’s full, so the camera overwrites the data. He gave me the key on the first – the last reset was September twenty-fifth – so the video’ll be gone _today_. At _midnight_.”

Now Evan understood why Jared was panicking. “Can’t you call someone? Call your rabbi!”

“It’s nine thirty on a Sunday, he’s not gonna pick up!”  

Evan made him try calling anyway. As Jared expected, no one answered. He didn’t know the personal numbers of anyone else on the staff. He could call the office, but of course no one was there on a Sunday night. 

“Can’t you – I don’t know – access it remotely, or something?” Evan asked.

"No, I don’t have access to the account, I made the staff pick the passwords. If I was just _there_ , I could take the SIM card out of the camera – goddammit, but we’re in the next town, I can’t get there before midnight!” Jared said. “There's no one else I can call!"

"No..." Evan said. He took a deep breath. There was one person left. Someone who knew how to break into buildings. Someone who lived within running distance of the synagogue. "We haven't called everyone yet." 

Connor had given Evan the number of his burner phone. He said to only use it for emergencies. Hence, when Connor picked up, the first thing he said was, "This'd better be important."

"Connor! Are you - are you home?"

"Obviously. It's almost curfew time."

Evan had forgotten about the ten PM curfew. Still - he quickly explained Jared's problem. Connor listened silently. When Evan finished, Connor asked, "So what do you want me to do?"

"Jared's in a lot of-"

"I don't give a fuck about Jared," Connor said calmly. "What do  _you_  want?"

Evan hadn't even stopped to consider that.  
  
He was asking Connor to take a big risk on behalf of someone he didn't even like - in fact, someone who had profoundly insulted him. And why? Because Evan still felt loyal to Jared? What had Jared ever done to earn that loyalty?

And yet...

"You're not the worst thing you ever did," Evan said. "But...neither is he. He's a jerk sometimes, but he's just a dumbass teenager. Like all of us. And I don't want him to go to jail for something he didn't do."

Connor was silent for a moment. "Put Jared on the phone."

Evan handed Jared his phone. They talked for a short while, away from where Evan could hear. When Jared came back, Evan noticed his mom and Adam finally walking towards the car.

"What a night!" Evan's mom said. "We had _no_ reception in there - we thought we'd never get out! How long were you all waiting?"

If Evan and Jared seemed distracted on the ride back, it was for a good reason. The next few years of Jared’s life could hinge on Connor finding the right camera – and not getting caught. 

***

Monday morning.

When Evan arrived at school, he saw Jared sitting on one of the picnic tables outside the auditorium. Jared looked positively green. 

“Did you hear from Connor?” he asked Evan as soon as he approached.

Evan shook his head. Like Jared, he hadn’t slept much the night before. He worried about Jared – a little – but mostly he worried about Connor. Sneaking out after curfew was bad. Entering a building without permission was bad. If he was caught, who knew how much would be added to his probation? Evan almost wanted to call again and say forget it, he’d changed his mind – but then he thought about Jared getting sued, and the two competing concerns would chase each other all over again.

“If he does this, he’s a better man than you,” Evan said.

“Oh, he made it very clear he was doing it for you, not me. He thinks I’m a living shitstain.”

“I mean…” Evan said.

“Yeah. I know. I deserve it. I’ll owe him my _ass_.” 

Finally – after the five-minute warning bell, after watching dozens of cars pull into the lot – Evan spotted Connor and Zoe in the distance. He thought he saw the siblings nod to each other slightly. Then Connor came up to Jared, just a minute before homeroom started.  

“Murphy?”

“Kleinman,” Connor said, with a tiny salute. Then he passed something over to Jared, fluidly, casually, and kept walking. He only brushed the back of Evan’s hand slightly as he passed. A touch could still send a bolt of electricity up Evan’s arm. 

With Connor gone, Evan looked at what Jared was holding. Connor had passed over a tiny orange pill bottle, with the label removed. Jared twisted off the safety cap. Inside was a long, wide paper ribbon. And folded inside the ribbon was…

A SIM card. Jared took a deep, sharp breath.

_He’s safe_ , Evan thought. The footage was safe. He could show he hadn’t stolen anything. Even if the DA pressed charges – even if the family sued – he could prove his innocence.

“Hey, he wrote something.” Jared unfolded the ribbon all the way. His eyes widened. Then he slapped the ribbon onto the table. “ _Man_.” 

Evan picked up the paper and read it.

In Connor’s neatest, finest script – full of swirls and filigrees, like he was signing the Declaration of Independence – he had written, “SUCK IT, JARED.”

*** 

“Here it is!” Evan said, racing towards the tallest tree. Connor followed behind him more slowly.

It was the Friday after everything – the last day of a blessedly uneventful week. No family blow-ups. No urgent phone calls. No property damage. As far as Evan was concerned, he’d be happy if the rest of the year could be just as boring as this.  

Jared had apologized to Connor. (Connor had forced him to say it in Spanish. It was, he said, the funniest thing he’d heard all week.) They still didn’t like each other – probably never would – but Connor had more than earned his respect and gratitude, however reluctant. Jared also owed him a favor. Evan had a feeling Connor would hold the debt over Jared like a Mafia boss – but honestly, that seemed only fair.

Now Evan reached the base of the locust tree. His breath came out in curls of steam as he waited for Connor to catch up to him. It was a cold day – maybe too cold for the picnic he’d packed – but he was determined to show Connor this, at least.

Connor stood beside him, hands in his coat pockets. He tilted his head back to look at the tree. Then he said, “Wow.”

“This is George, the locust tree.”

“When you sent me the picture, I honestly thought it was wrapped in barbed wire.”

“What? No!” Evan said. “Those are thorns! It evolved them to stop prehistoric animals from eating it, millions of years ago.”

“What, like dinosaurs?”

“No, more like – giant sloths, and mammoths, and things. They’re all extinct now, but the tree kept the thorns. They’re so tough that people used to use them as nails.”

Connor touched one of the thorns. It was as long as his hand, and needle sharp. “This tree could seriously fuck you up.”  

“It’s one of my favorites,” Evan said happily.

Connor stepped back for another long look. “Couldn’t you breed it so that it doesn’t have thorns anymore?”

“Well, yeah, you could, but why would you want to? It’s part of its history. It’s what makes it interesting.”

“You seriously like this? Even the spiky parts?”

“The spiky parts are the best parts!” Evan said.

Connor took his hand. “You,” he said, with clear affection, “are a freakin’ weirdo.”

It really was too cold to stay outside. They started to walk back to the car.

“Too bad we couldn’t do this last week, when it was warmer.”

“I’m just glad no one caught you last Sunday.”

Connor was quiet for a moment. “Someone did catch me.”

“What?”

“Zoe,” he said. “She caught me sneaking out. But when I told her why I was going, she covered for me. My probation officer called – he does sometimes, to make sure I’m back by ten – and she told him I was asleep in my room. She liked I was taking a risk to get someone else out of trouble, for once.” He squeezed Evan’s hand. “That’s why she finally agreed to join family counseling on Monday.”

Evan had known Zoe had agreed to counseling; he hadn’t known why. “Didn’t your dad join too?”

“Yeah – now that my mom and Zoe are both going, he doesn’t want to be the stick in the mud. He _should’ve_ joined because he wants me to get better, so it’s kind of a shitty start, but whatever. It’s a start.”      

So all the Murphys were in counseling now. That reminded him… “I saw my therapist yesterday.” He cleared his throat. “I, uh, told her about you.”

Connor laughed. “Is this the new ‘meet the parents’? Telling our therapists about each other?”   

Evan blushed. He’d told Dr. Sherman about Connor; he hadn’t mentioned they were more-than-friends. They could go over the intricacies of his orientation in a different session. Evan wasn’t even ready to explore that yet himself. He just knew that he really liked holding Connor’s hand, and that was good enough for him.  

Connor asked, “So she’s okay with you seeing someone like me?”

Evan knew he could feed him clichés – like _You are not your diagnosis_ or _I’m dating a person, not a disorder_ – which, while true, weren’t what Connor wanted to hear, or what Evan wanted to say. Instead he said, “Even if she wasn’t, it’s still my choice.” He looked at Connor. “What do you want me to do?”

“I don’t know,” he said. He sounded shy. Not a usual look for him. “Just don’t give up on me.”

Evan smiled slowly. “I won’t.”

They still had a long way to go. Therapy was no panacea. They had months – years – of hard work ahead of them. But it was a start.

As Connor pulled him in, Evan thought that despite the cold and fog, despite all the brokenness behind and the hard healing ahead, the day was perfect. Connor was alive, and next to him. That was more than enough.


End file.
